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Keywords: Museum

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The empathy revolution

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 14 February 2014
    3 Comments

    While realpolitik can drive us beyond a healthy scepticism to cynicism and indifference, British cultural thinker Roman Krzaric contends that when we look beyond the real — through imagination, creativity, vulnerability and networking — we can bring about the ideal of 'empathy on a mass scale to create social change' and even go about 'extending our empathy skills to embrace the natural world'. Without dreamers like Krzaric, we're stuffed.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cardinal sins in beautiful Rome

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 January 2014
    5 Comments

    The cardinal is senseless to the libertine Jep's enquiries about faith, and prone to missing ordinary human connections in the midst of his politicking and self-obsession. If this is an unflattering reflection of institutional Catholicism, it finds its counterpoint in an ancient nun known as the Saint, whose humility reveals to Jep the possibility of transcendence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My life as a tourist trap

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 29 January 2014
    5 Comments

    When I have achieved universal fame, they will turn my childhood house into a tourist attraction. My mum and dad's bedroom won't be of much interest to many enthusiasts, but in the lounge room, they will be excited to see the original family lounge suite. It is unlikely my Ikea bookcase will have survived, but visitors will be able to enjoy a faithful reconstruction, built by an artisan specialising in the 'Allen key' method of furniture design.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    On death and preservation

    • Lorraine McGuigan
    • 19 November 2013
    2 Comments

    Laid out with care this woman lifted from a dry river-bed. Here is death but also preservation: turned-up nose, high cheekbones, long lashes fringing her sunken eyes ... Beside her a child staring, close to tears, hands bunched into fists ... a six-year-old girl and this ageless beauty. Rising between them the dust of centuries.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Change tax tack to take power back

    • Jean-Paul Gagnon
    • 18 November 2013
    15 Comments

    What if citizens were given the chance to fill out a preference form online as part of their own personal, digital tax portal? You could choose to pick 'below the line' and individually choose what your tax money can and can't be spent on. For example you might like to spend on funding public schools, the bullet train, hospital supplies and museums, and not to spend on nuclear power plants, weapons development, or the automotive industry subsidy.

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  • RELIGION

    The insubstantial Bishop of Bling

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 October 2013
    13 Comments

    Springtime draws attention to the sweet harmonies and scratchy discord between style and substance. Ducks escort their young across green lawns, and peck at anything that dares approach them. Young things in suits or summer dresses sit sozzled in Cup Day mud. Meanwhile in the Catholic Church, Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was suspended from office for his profligate spending during a time of austerity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Would-be nun's Holocaust history

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 October 2013
    2 Comments

    On the eve of taking her vows as a nun, 18-year-old novice Ida learns that she is Jewish. This sets her on a journey of self-discovery as she seeks to, literally, uncover the bones of her past, which has its roots in the Holocaust. It is timely to reflect on these matters in the wake of last weekend's anti-semitic violence in Bondi. It is better to grasp the bones of truth than walk in pious ignorance past the mass graves of history.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My election campaign hibernation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 September 2013
    25 Comments

    Over a meal with church members and local party officials in a small village outside Xian in China, a local asks after Lù Kèwén (Kevin Rudd). He had heard that Mr Murdoch was being very tough on him! This unsurprisingly is the only mention of Australian politics the whole week. But they were surprised to learn that yet again Australia was likely to lose its only Mandarin speaking PM. They have no idea of the alternatives.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    21st century hermit

    • David Lumsden
    • 27 August 2013
    5 Comments

    He carried no phone and sent no text. He had no email address, deleted no spam, recharged no devices, never backed up.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope's Catholic health check

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 August 2013
    31 Comments

    Both Francis and Benedict emphasise Christian faith in the Catholic Church as the privileged way of finding meaning in life. But where Benedict might picture the Church as a treasury of all the beliefs, relationships, liturgical details and traditions, Francis might imagine it as like a dispensary from which health workers go out to share their life saving medicines.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Kevin Rudd and Indonesia's Obama

    • Pat Walsh
    • 04 July 2013
    10 Comments

    Rudd's visit to Jakarta this week will be judged on the outcome of asylum seeker discussions. But he needs also to send a clear message about Australia's hopes for next year's presidential elections. Candidates include a former military commander with a dubious human rights record, and a civilian being described as Indonesia's Obama.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Giving stick to incipient police violence

    • Brian Doyle
    • 01 May 2013
    5 Comments

    A nightstick doesn't sound fearsome, but when you see one up close you respect the inherent violence of the thing. I stared at it for a while, contemplating how a burly policeman with his feet set could deliver a cracking blow to a head or a shoulder or an arm flung across your face to protect your eyes and brains.

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