La Trobe university’s art history department is set to be abolished, with a consultation period over the changes to the university’s humanities program to end this month. While one art history department…
WHAT IS AUSTRALIA FOR? Australia is no longer small, remote or isolated. It’s time to ask What Is Australia For?, and to acknowledge the wealth of resources we have beyond mining. Over the next two weeks…
Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt? The MTC’s new play The Heretic, which premieres on 17 May, tells the story of climate scientist Dr Diane Cassell…
Harold Mitchell’s review of private sector arts support is a bit like Ian Thorpe in his swimming heyday. He’s a big presence, and has dived in with a determined goal and a strategy to win “gold” for the…
The following is a poem commissioned by The Conversation from Sydney City Poet, Kate Middleton on the year that was. Did you read about the MARS-500 simulation? Six men in isolation sharing a broken English…
Julian Barnes’ 11th novel represents an interesting choice for the judges of this year’s Booker Prize, and it goes without saying that a prize like this is always going to arouse criticism and even controversy…
Julian Barnes today won the Man Booker Prize for his novel about a childhood friendship and the fragility of memory, The Sense of an Ending. This is the fourth time he’s been nominated, and Barnes declared…
Australia’s dispersed population and its vast tyrannies of distance has created a major, ongoing, cultural divide. The relative costs of consuming culture between bush and city are starkly skewed in favour…
Australia is on a promise to develop a National Cultural Policy, the first since Creative Nation in 1994. Minister for the Arts Simon Crean has released a discussion paper designed to examine how Australia…
There seems little doubt that the rise of widespread international interest and investment in contemporary art and contemporary art museums has stimulated a demand for diverse and compelling programs that…
Margaret Olley, one of Australia’s best known artists, has died at her home in Sydney. She was 88. The Conversation asked Christopher Menz, the Acting Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at University…
Margaret Olley, one of Australia’s best known artists, has died at her home in Sydney. She was 88. Art Gallery of NSW director, Edmund Capon, described her in a statement as “passionate, committed and…
Sometimes we just get sucked into a story. Reason, caution and scepticism sometimes just get swiftly sidelined for a story that’s captivating. And sometimes, along the gay girl in Syria, Colorado balloon…
Western Australian author Kim Scott won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for the second time last night with his fifth novel, That Deadman Dance. Described by one judge as “post-reconciliation” fiction…
Conversation is civilized speech. It is more purposeful than chatter; more humane than gossip; more intimate than debate. But it is an elusive ideal. In our verbal exchanges we often flip from one topic…
Last night’s premiere of Chris Lilley’s third mockumentary series, Angry Boys, was a reminder that television comedy in Australia as we once knew it has changed forever. In the wake of the popular successes…
This year’s Archibald prize has gone to Ben Quilty’s portrait of Australian artist Margaret Olley. It’s an award often criticised for being populist or irrelevant, and there’s no reason to think that this…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne