Clik here to view.
Victor Hugo's house museums
The City of Paris preserves the two houses where Victor Hugo (1802-85) lived the longest, one in Paris itself and one on the island of Guernsey. In addition, there is a third home that I want to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dora Meeson: an Australian expat artist in London
Women artists who had previously struggling to establish their art careers, now emerged and bloomed, at least from the late Victorian era on. We ask the following questions:1. Did women do well in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Silk Road sarcophagus 592 AD
All semester, the students have been reading about the Silk Road that linked Beijing to Istanbul via Central China, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. We have examined the architecture of Islamic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Adjusting history: Jesse Owens and Nazi race theories
In 1931, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice signalled Germany's inclusion in the democratic world community after the horrors of World War I.It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Repairing British and Australian soldiers after WW1
In the article "Horrors of Anzac aftermath laid bare", The Age Newspaper in Melbourne tried to uncover WW1 soldiers' personal stories. The timing was perfect - just in time for the 100th anniversary...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Archibald Prize Portraits in Australia: 1921-1945.
Let's Face It: The history of the Archibald Prize was a book written by Peter Ross and published by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999. I have already referred to the prize-winning Portrait of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Judy Cassab: from Hungary to Australia to the world
There are two connections to the artist Judy Cassab that I want to explore. The first is a review of a book that I wrote, published in the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal of Nov 2006. It...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cezanne and Zola's favourite brasserie ...in Aix
Aix-en-Provence is a French university town that dates its first royal charter back to 1409. The new town is interesting but it is the old town, with its narrow windy streets and its noble homes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beatrix Potter: artist, photographer, writer and farmer
Like most children on the planet, I was read Beatrix Potter books as a child. But why did a grown woman dedicate herself to animal stories?Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866, to two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A powerful film about Catholic Poles and Jewish Poles
I saw the film Aftermath (2012), spoken in Polish with English subtitles. The two main characters, Franek (Ireneusz Czop) and Jozek Kalina (Maciej Stuhr), were sons of a poor farmer in a small village...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Glorious Days: Australia 1913 - Vida Goldstein
Glorious Days: Australia 1913 was an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia that contributed to the Centenary of Canberra celebrations and explored life in 1913. It used contemporary...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mystery plays in Britain and in Germany
Formal drama emerged in Britain by and for the church, perhaps to gain the interest of the common people. The medieval church did anything to attract congregants’ attention; they added sculptures,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peru's lost cultures - destroyed by the Spanish in the C16th
I know a lot about Spanish culture in South America and rather less about the Inca’s Machu Picchu in Peru. But I know nothing about the splendid cultures that PRE-dated the Incas. Now the National...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ivon Hitchens and British art of the inter war years.
Ivon Hitchens was born in London in 1893, and had one big advantage over other would-be artists – his father was the landscape artist Alfred Hitchens. By the time World War One had finished, young Ivon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Edith Piaf: 50th anniversary of her death in 1963.
In 1963 I loved the Beatles because my parents did not; I loved Peter Paul and Mary, The Seekers and Mamas and Papas because protest-laden folk songs were very cool, and I adored Edith Piaf.Édith Piaf...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
In 1947 Italian entrepreneur Claudio Alcorso moved to Tasmania to set up Silk and Textiles, a fabric printing factory where some of the textiles were designed by fmous Australian artists like William...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Angry Penguins: art in war-time Melbourne 1938-45
The Contemporary Art Society was the central organisation for 9 artists in Melbourne. Set up in 1938 in defence of artistic freedom and to encourage modern art, the Society enabled the artists to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My all-time greatest hero in Australia - Egon Kisch
Egon Kisch (1885–1948) was a Jewish Czech whose first language was German. Like all the young men of his generation, he had served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI. If he wasn’t a modernist and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who made the first moving film in the 1890s?
Who created the first film? I must thank Brian Manley who acknowledged many innovators. In Moving Pictures: The History of Early Cinema he wrote that Louis Aimé Le Prince (1841-1890), a French...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Luxury train travel in Japan
Many thanks for the following article (14/12/13), courtesy of The Age and its writer Jamie Lafferty. I have added my own comments below Jamie Lafferty’s report.We start in the newly constructed Kinsei...
View Article