The AIDS crisis arrived in Australia in 1982 and triggered an enormous (and successful) public health response, largely driven by volunteers. These people, often from marginalised communities in their own right, deserve recognition in Australia’s proud volunteer tradition.
New technologies are taking books and libraries to places that are, as yet, unimaginable.
Shutterstock
The history of the library is replete with mechanical marvels. More than collections of books, libraries are social, cultural and technological institutions that house the very idea of a society.
The women’s magazine formula runs deep in many online publications branded as ‘feminist’. While the personal was once deemed political, the emphasis now is on adapting to the status quo - not changing it.
Claire Danes as CIA agent Carrie Mathison in Homeland: in one episode, she stops taking her medication in order to solve the puzzle of who is attempting to kill her.
Teakwood Lane Productions, Cherry Pie Productions, Keshet Broadcasting
A spate of recent TV shows feature protagonists whose mental health condition gives them special skills. But these are often accessed by rejecting medication.
Joan of Arc depicted on horseback in an illustration from a 1505 manuscript.
Wikimedia Commons
Forget Wonder Woman and Batman. The Maid of Orléans - an uneducated, teenage girl who led armies to victory - is a hero for our times.
A wonderful evocation of the horrors of last year’s long election campaign by David Rowe in the Australian Financial Review. Amid industry turmoil, newspaper cartooning is increasingly becoming a niche activity.
One of the great satirical achievements of the mass media era, the editorial cartoon, is losing its centrality in the digital age. Yet the ‘visual terrorism’ of cartoons can cut through the verbiage of political commentary.
An aerial shot of discarded life jackets on the Greek island of Lesvos.
Tasos Markou
In late 2015, 200,000 refugees a month were arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. Tasos Markou went there to photograph their plight - and ended up joining the locals to help the new arrivals.
Eugenia Falleni in 1920. An Italian-born-woman-turned-Sydney-dwelling-man, Falleni was convicted of murder in 1920.
Wikimedia
An Italian-born-woman-turned-Sydney-dwelling-man, Eugenia Falleni was convicted of murder in 1920. Researching a novel about Falleni left this author literally, and figuratively, at sea.
Detail from Katsushika Hokusai, The great wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki namiura), (1830–34), from the Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji (Fugaku-sanjū-rokkei)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1909 (426-2)
Hokusai’s Great Wave is the enduring image of Japanese art. Less well known is the story of its primary pigment - Prussian blue - which was created in a lab accident in Berlin and sparked ‘blue fever’ in Europe.
Anthropologist Percy Leason thought he was painting the extinction of Victoria’s Indigenous people in the 1930s. He was wrong, but his portraits, part of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, are surprisingly sympathetic.
Madonna and fashion designer Jeremy Scott arrive at this year’s Met Gala in New York.
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Why is Cher, 71, celebrated when she wears a near-nude costume while Madonna, 58, receives revulsion? 19th century women’s magazines reveal how the double standards of beauty for older women came about.
A close up from Michael Jensen’s Pintupi and Anmatyerr artists in Men’s Painting Room (circa August 1972).
Michael Jensen
The Men’s Painting Room - a Nissen hut in the government settlement of Papunya - is Australian art’s most important atelier. A new form of creative expression happened here.
Ishtar (on right) comes to Sargon, who would later become one of the great kings of Mesopotamia.
Edwin J. Prittie, The story of the greatest nations, 1913
Love, it is said, is a battlefield, and it was no more so than for the first goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Her legend has influenced cultural archetypes from Aphrodite to Wonder Woman.
A parade in St Petersburg last year celebrating Bloomsday, the day on which Ulysses is set.
Shutterstock
Around the world today, fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses will celebrate Bloomsday. This experimental novel can be bewildering to read, but for those who persist, it is a ‘feast’ of a book.
The lack of strong female characters in children’s picture books is oft-lamented. But a new crop of books invites girls to write themselves into history.
The Qantas uniform from 1964-1969, designed by Leon Paule.
Qantas
Being an air hostess in the 1960s was a sought after job. But bodies were carefully policed: at Qantas, if a hostess put on too much weight she could be rostered off until she’d lost it.
Julia (with the orange hair) and her friends from Sesame Street.
Zach Hyman
The introduction of a new Muppet on Sesame Street represents an encouraging cultural shift in the portrayal of characters with autism. But there is still a way to go.
Queen Elizabeth II meets with Australian Defence Force personnel and veterans at the Australian War Memorial in 2011.
Graham Tidy/AAP
As Australians once found spiritual communion through allegiance to the British monarch, they find similar virtues in Anzac today. Can the republican movement connect with a large enough number of people in a similar way?
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
