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Channel: New Zealand Listener » Cultural Curmudgeon
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Creative New Zealand’s Venice selection

Conventional wisdom puts the worlds population of New Zealanders at five million with about four million of them living at home. Those who are absent turn up in the most surprising occupations and...

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ArtBox project a good idea

At the end of October, with a well- deserved ra-ra, Christchurch restored shopping therapy to its munted CBD with an ingenious collection of shops in Cashel Mall constructed from containers. The only...

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Hamish Keith on museums

A disclosure: I chair a working party of a bunch of museum professionals, with an eminent architect thrown in, who are making a case for exhibition space on the Auckland waterfront for the national...

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Don Driver

Don Driver was a great artist who didnt need a buzzing metropolis to inspire him.

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John Key’s insightful cultural comment up there with George W Bush

History is not on the Prime Ministers side when it comes to the All Blacks vs literature.

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Auckland’s heritage suffers the death of a thousand careless cuts

Heritage houses in Auckland continue to be demolished, despite a promise from Len Brown.

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What to do about street art?

Tagging is a blight, but those in charge of our civic spaces need to find a way to allow street art to thrive.

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The Dowse Art Museum and cultural views of death

Instead of just cancelling So It Vanishes, the Dowse Art Museum could have taken the opportunity to explore the different Maori and Mexican views of death.

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Iron awe: Bernar Venet’s Arc

Art is a risky business and writing about art is riskier. Some cultural conditions are so rare that, to misuse a Churchillian aphorism, the words describing them should only appear in public if...

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Accessible art

What was Auckland Art Gallery thinking when, mixing up the glitterati with the glitterarty, it shipped in a raft of 100 people famous for being well-known to glam up the opening of the Degas to Dal...

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Australia’s Archibald Prize

Australias Archibald Prize is a glorious car crash of egos.

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Finding our place in the Asian century

A famous Canadian singer and an Oscar-winning film director buy large chunks of New Zealand and we are flattered. They are people like us. A New York billionaire transforms a couple of iconic...

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April was the wackiest month

It is an iconic symbol of human anxiety so it is no surprise that last month Edvard Munchs The Scream set a new world record for the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. At NZ$152 million,...

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Why are we so doggedly monolingual?

New Zealanders fear of other languages is difficult to understand.

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New Zealanders’ attitudes to the arts

While the Rugby World Cup was being hailed as a success, where was the applause for the survey findings about New Zealanders attitudes to the arts?

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Christchurch Art Gallery takes to the street

Making a virtue out of adversity.

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Pacific presence

When several hundred of Aucklands Pacific citizens marched through the central city in June, it was, one of the organisers said, just to let Aucklanders know we are here.

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Street art – a fine example of art by ambush

Street art is a fine example of art by ambush, not only taking us by surprise but, at its best, offering unmediated joy, says Hamish Keith.

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Ai Weiwei: An artist for our age

The more I think of Ai, the more I suspect he is writing the rules for art in this century, and the word engagement will be high among them, says Hamish Keith.

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Olympics and art?

There was a time when the Olympics awarded medals for architecture, poetry, music

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