Young, experimental arts practitioners are exploring new ways to think about cultural leadership. But if we see leadership as a form of action rather than a role, how should we teach it?
From Afar on a Hill seeks to dispel misconceptions around the numbers, circumstances, motivations and the actual mechanisms for acceptance of asylum seekers in Australia.
Company Upstairs
From Afar on a Hill is an immersive theatre work that provides insight into the lived experience of asylum seekers and lays bare the arbitrariness of Australia’s immigration policies.
To bring arts policy into the 21st century, we need to update and correct the basic economic flaws that were baked into the mid-20th century model.
Fabrik Bilder/Shutterstock
Turnbull’s 21st century vision for government provides an opportunity to fundamentally rethink arts and cultural policy from the ground up and move beyond its 20th century legacy.
The ills that afflict any society can be dealt with much more effectively when the arts are integrated into the national conversation.
John Gollings/AAPONE
What if Malcolm Turbull’s conception of “21st-century government” imagines a healthy civil society and a responsive economy that values debate, imagination, difference and surprise - all provided by the arts.
Bold programming at the Edinburgh Fringe challenges the engrained tick-box culture, which at its worst, serves only to pay lip service to diversity.
Senator Scott Ludlam said changes to arts funding will mean the minister will not need to publicly reveal funding recipients. True or false?
AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
The Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam said changes to arts funding will mean arts minister George Brandis won’t need to publicly disclose who he’s funding. He said it’s unbelievable – but is it true?
Audrey Hepburn photographed wearing Givenchy by Norman Parkinson, 1955.
Norman Parkinson Ltd/Courtesy Norman Parkinson Archive
There’s plenty of hand-wringing about the humanities being in crisis – but is that actually the case? In Australia, the sector is thriving, and policy should be made on that basis.
A 1893 self-portrait of the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).
Wikimedia Commons
Artist Paul Gauguin is perhaps most famous for his colorful paintings of Tahitian life. But for years, art historians puzzled over his lesser-known prints: how did he form, layer and transfer images from one medium to another?
Development is underway all around Sydney harbour – but has the public interest been well served?
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
The major political parties seem captive to an ideologically driven obsession to privatise public spaces – including the Powerhouse Museum site in Ultimo and other harbour-front sites.
James Blunt is upset. He has objected – in terms neither civil, nor particularly well-argued – to the suggestion from shadow culture secretary, Chris Bryant, that people from working-class backgrounds…
A view of the atrium from the Calderwood Courtyard.
Zak Jensen
After ten years of planning and six years of construction the Harvard Art Museums opens its doors to the public on November 16. The $350 million renovation combines the collections of three distinct museums…
Spit and polish: upkeep at the prize-winning Yorkshire Sculpture Garden.
Lynne Cameron/PA
On July 9, the annual Museum of the Year Prize, run by the Museum Prize Trust and sponsored since 2008 by the Art Fund, awarded £100,000 to the winner: the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which shone in a shortlist…
South Australia’s answer to dolewave, Bitch Perfect.
Bedroom Suck Records
It must have come as a relief to many Australian musicians that maligned guitar-pop genre tag “dolewave” met an untimely end the other week. I imagine it would have been the only relief Australian musicians…
We need to break beyond operatic exclamations.
Wikimedia Commons
“Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler?” This classic line from Willy Russell’s Educating Rita, spoken by the broken aesthete Trish, signifies both main character Rita’s entry into the realms of cultured…
The Last of Us is as gripping as many of the films you’ll see in the cinema.
PlayStation Europe
Hollywood’s most celebrated actors, actresses and directors are, by now, finalising their outfits and having their manicures in preparation for the impending Oscars ceremony on 2 March. It’s considerably…
It’s time to wake up to London’s cultural dominance.
shutterstock
London has 15.4%, one eighth, of the population of England. It is well known that London receives a disproportionate amount of UK arts subsidies, but perhaps not the vast extent of this. Our independently…
Is Annie Lennox really the only notable female composer?
EPA/MARK KEHOE
Last week, Jude Kelly, artistic director of London’s prestigious Southbank Centre, was the most recent arts luminary to wonder in public why women in music are rarer than English cricket victories in Australia…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne