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Strong American women Part I - Jewish women in NY meat riots
As Rachel Serkin showed, from 1881 until the USA changed its immigration laws, 2.5 million Jews emigrated to the USA from Eastern Europe. Over a third of them settled in New York's Lower East Side,...
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Strong American Women Part II - Catholic women fighting for the vote
Many women's suffragists emerged from the abolitionist movement. They saw suffrage as a matter of divine justice as well as human rights. Other women viewed the right to vote as not only a political...
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Strong American Women Part III - Protestant women in the KKK
The Ku Klux Klan Revival did not occur till 1915 when William Simmons created a vision of a noble, antebellum South without blacks. Just then the USA was struggling to manage huge waves of...
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Bauhaus exhibitions, exactly 100 years after the Academy opened in Germany
I wrote about Bauhaus' 100th anniversary: 1919-2019 a few months ago. Basically, when the tragedies of WW1 finally ended, architect Walter Gropius founded Bauhaus School of Art & D in Weimar...
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Drama and Devotion - to my beloved Caravaggio
Beyond Caravaggio was exhibited in the UK to explore the influence of Caravaggio on the art of his Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch and Spanish followers. This collaboration between Britain’s three...
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2019: The fabulous year of Rembrandt
From 1639-58 Rembrandt lived and worked in a lovely house, now The Rembrandt House Museum Amsterdam. A contemporary inventory was used as the source for restoring the house with C17th furniture, art...
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Apart from Australia's tennis players, I loved Arthur Ashe most of all.
Born in Richmond Va, Arthur Ashe (1943–93) began tennis at 7 at Brookfield Park, a segregated park near home. Years later he found a mentor in Dr Robert Johnson, who coached young black tennis stars....
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Mods Vs Rockers - teen independence or teen revolution?
In the USA teenage culture was reflected in popular culture, novels and films like Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and rock & roll by Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock (1954). But the American term...
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Beautiful old American synagogues revived for a second life.
Paula Jacobs showed that across the USA, historic shules (synagogues) became Jewish cultural centres and museums, breathing new life into dilapidated and empty shule buildings. They preserved the...
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Cristobal Balenciaga comes to Bendigo (near Melbourne)
Born in a small fishing village in Spain’s Basque region, Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) began studying dressmaking at 10. The tragic early death of his maritime father forced his mother to support...
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How the Englishman Pike Ward modernised Iceland. Who?
Edited by Katherine Findlay, The Icelandic Adventures of Pike Ward is the fascinating diary of a Devon fish merchant who became an important figure in creating modern Iceland. Katherine Findlay...
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Dr William Harvey, a brave scholar on blood circulation Guest blog
Galen, a skilled C2nd AD Greek physician and scholar, taught that there were three main inter-connected systems involved in blood flow: a] brain and nerves; b] heart and arteries; and c] liver and...
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History of Venetian glass from Murano. Now in a special Melbourne exhibition
The origins of glassmaking in Venice go back to the times of the Roman Empire when moulded glass was used for illumination in bathhouses. Blending Roman experience with the skills learned from the...
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Russian ANZACS who fought for Australia in WW1
Federation came to Australia on 1/1/1901. The Australian & New Zealand Army Corps were formed in Egypt in 1915 out of the 1st Australian Imperial Force/AIF and the 1st New Zealand Expeditionary...
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Sir Stamford Raffles: a scholarly exhibition at the British Museum
Young Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) was first employed as a clerk at the British East India Company in 1795 and ten years later he was posted to Malaya with the Company. Lord Minto,...
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Have a reflective Remembrance Day. Remember WWI's young teens
When the book Russian ANZACs came out in 2005, I was sitting in an outdoor coffeeshop, discussing the subject with my neighbour-cousin. I knew our two grandfather had sailed together to Australia in...
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The best state premier ever: Don Dunstan (Sth Australia)
Fiji born Don Dunstan (1926-1999) did Law-Arts at Adelaide University, joined the Socialist Club and became deeply committed to social justice, cultural diversity, democracy, human rights and...
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Most beautiful bookshops in the world
Since reading literature on Kindle and buying books via the Net are easy, normal bookshops seem less frequent now. However book lovers argue that a traditional temple of books has a special atmosphere...
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The real Peaky Blinders, Birmingham 1890
With fine camera work and classy performances, the Peaky Blinders series on BBC2 attracted both viewers and critics from 2013 on. It told of the rise to power of Tommy Shelby and his fashionably...
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Forced sterilisation in the USA, for the community's good!
The term eugenics originated with English scientist Francis Galton. In Hereditary Genius (1869), Galton advocated a selective breeding programme among humans, to ensure that upper class...
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