Newsletter
Newsletter 551
Monday, August 5th, 2024 Newsletter,Even though I haven’t been sitting up all night watching obscure sports I’ve never followed before, if I start watching the Olympics, I still find it hard to tear myself away from the screen. I’m sure a lot of people have the same problem. There’s something incredibly sticky and addictive about the games, although in […]
Newsletter 550
Thursday, August 1st, 2024 Newsletter,American politics has become the greatest reality TV program of all time. Almost everybody seems to be addicted to their daily dose of “What Trump did last night”, marvelling at how utterly fantastic the whole thing has become. I use the word in the sense of “seeming more appropriate to the imagination than to reality”, not […]
Newsletter 549
Monday, July 22nd, 2024 Newsletter,I’m writing this from Newhaven, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, a property owned and administered by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. But more of that next week. It’s ironic that one of the last emails I received before plunging into Internet limbo, was from Lindsay Sharp, former director of the Powerhouse Museum, passing […]
Newsletter 548
Monday, July 15th, 2024 Newsletter,Since its inception in 2011, David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art has acted as a trailblazer and agent provocateur in the field. MONA’s jumbled hangs, themselves modelled on the shows Axel Vervoordt put together for the Palazzo Fortuny during successive Venice Biennales, have changed the way local insitutions display their collections. One could […]
Newsletter 547
Monday, July 8th, 2024 Newsletter,It was reassuring that Albo turned up at the National Gallery last week to launch the Gauguin exhibition, considering his predecessor’s idea of a cultural experience was a night at the Rooty Hill Colosseum hooting for his favourite Christian rock band. As Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao is arguably the most significant exhibition we’ill […]
Newsletter 546
Sunday, June 30th, 2024 Newsletter,Farewells. I thought last year was tragic but 2024 has been even worse. We’ve lost Guy Warren, at the age of 103, which is a good innings by any reckoning, but Guy is only the most prominent departure. He used to complain, jokingly, that the problem with being 100 is that people only want to […]
Newsletter 545
Monday, June 24th, 2024 Newsletter,How many nuclear power plants does it take to boil an egg? Seven, according to the Leader of the Opposition. This week’s announcement of the Coalition’s nuclear plan for saving the planet shows they still haven’t found a way of saving themselves from further electoral embarrassment.Having lost blue ribbon seats to Teal candidates who stood […]
Newsletter 544
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 Newsletter,Readers of this newsletter, knowing the way my thoughts drift, often send me interesting articles. This week it was a piece from The Times about the Hay Literary Festival in the UK dumping a major sponsor because of pressure from a small, activist outfit. The sponsor was Baillie Gifford, a financial management group known for […]
Newsletter 543
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 Newsletter,Yes, it’s taken a while to post this week’s newsletter. I’ve been under the gun with Archibald Prize, Sydney Film Festival, and other major distractions but I also wanted to wait until I’d finished a second, more complete Archibald piece before sweeping up a few related observations. At this time of year one takes in […]
Newsletter 542
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Newsletter,It’s amazing to chart the reaction to Laura Tingle’s comment at the Sydney Writers Festival one week ago: “We are a racist country, let’s face it.” There have been at least 20 stories in The Australian alone, all tending in the same direction – that the ABC’s chief political correspondent is a crazed leftie who […]