The radical hope we find in the arts, culture and literature is often a reflection of the times. Drawing from the past there are many examples of how dreams can become a form of resilience.
A 1974 photograph of Buffalo’s Shoreline Apartments.
George Burns/National Arcvhives at College Park
Mismanaged and in disrepair, many low-income housing complexes are nonetheless seen as important avatars of modern architecture. But are calls for their preservation forgetting those who matter most?
Joy Hester at Fitzroy Gardens, 1942.
Albert Tucker/State Library of Victoria
Joy Hester’s entire body of work can be understood as an exploration of human relationships, connections, in all their complexity. A major retrospective now acknowledges her contribution.
Beethoven's compositions combine power, rhythm and deeply felt meaning - and they did not come easily. The composer was ahead of his time, and he knew it, even then.
A fake Lucky Sibiya investigated by the art school.
Fake copies of works by legendary black South African modernist artists are flooding the market - and one university is deploying a range of scientific tests to expose them.
Writing vividly about her beloved Aberdeenshire landscape has reconnected many readers and writers to nature, underscoring the need to protect our fragile environment.
A Royal Victorian Small Homes House, designed in conjuction with The Age newspaper, 1955.
Photo: Wolfgang Sievers. Pictures Collection, State Library Victoria
Renewed interest in mid-century modern houses is more about substance than style. They represent the emergence of a new spirit and a coming of age in postwar Australia.
John Lander Browne’s hillside house at Church Point might have been Sydney’s first notable postwar interpretation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic principles.
Max Dupain (c.1948)
Sydney Schools weren't actually schools, but houses that embraced the native Australian landscape, and reacted to international modernism.
Over the last hundred years, there have been at least three major waves of ‘progressive’ education in Ontario. Here, Premier Doug Ford with Finance Minister Vic Fedeli after presenting the 2019 budget at the legislature on April 11, 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
In the early 20th century, two families of collectors brought the best of modern French art to Russia. Many of their paintings - including works by Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne - can now be seen in Sydney.
Cities were once considered a source of many problems. But that vision has changed over the last generation.
Graeme Roy
Our current celebration of cities is a big shift from the past generation when cities were seen to contain all of our problems. Should we believe the hype? Are the new ideas equally problematic?
A photograph of Penn Station’s interior from the 1930s.
Bernice Abbott
We asked five architecture experts to name one building or structure they wish had been preserved, but couldn't resist the tides of decay, development and discrimination.
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.
His rise was just as swift as his fall. To mark the painter's 100th birthday, an art historian explores the forces – cultural, political and personal – that created a polarizing legacy.
A view of Tehran, with its mix of traditional and modern design.
Jørn Eriksson/Flick
The tale of a married woman who joins her lover in Paris, The Beauties and Furies is a modernist classic. Like Joyce's Ulysses, the action is concentrated in one city, but dreams are nightmarish in this city of night, not light.
German developer Jörg Duske has built student accommodation out of recycled shipping containers.
Holzer Kobler Architekturen
Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne