While tracing his own family’s journey from Ireland to Aotearoa New Zealand, Richard Shaw encountered how much ‘selective amnesia’ about the colonial past still shapes our lives today.
Tracing our ancestors’ connections to colonialism and industrialisation can help us personally connect with the climate crisis.
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My family is Mauritian, but when I take a DNA test, Mauritian didn’t even rank as an ethnicity. It can’t. Everyone from Mauritius is from somewhere else, or from many places at the same time.
Family Camping at Phillip Island, Victoria, 1951. Photographer: Leslie E. Chambers.
Unsplash/Museum Victoria
We surveyed 1461 Australians and discovered many are museum regulars — but it’s family history that has broad appeal.
These images of Cherine Fahd’s grandfather’s funeral were tucked away in a brown paper envelope for decades. As a society, we too often keep grief hidden from view.
One cymbal manufacturer has survived 400 years, but most in-house companies fail to survive through the generations.
Modern debates around breastfeeding would be eerily familiar to someone from the 18th or 19th century.
The Fashionable Mamma, James Gillroy, 1796. The British Museum.
Regular controversies over breastfeeding might seem like a quirk of contemporary life. But 18th and 19th century clothing reveal that women have been handling the issue of visibility and practicality for centuries.
Memoirists who write about divorce, addiction or suicide can start important conversations – and leave families feeling exposed or humiliated. Where do you draw the line?
fosa./Flickr
True stories that enrich our public sphere are often drawn from the intimate and shared lives of their authors. Where is the line between rattling social proprieties and respecting others’ privacy?
Marina Picasso is planning on selling a number of her grandfather’s works in the upcoming year.
AFP
Over the last nine years, more money has been spent on Picasso than on any other artist. How much does Picasso’s granddaughter stand to earn? And why are some in the art world concerned?
Grandfather Edward, grandmother Maud and great uncle Jimmy.
Richard Grayson
From an early age, I was fascinated by any story about war. Being born in 1969, and being a child in the 1970s, a large number of my “play” options were linked to the war. I read comics such as Warlord…