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An active and contemplative life
About Face article
From Cicero through St. Augustine and Coluccio Salutati right up to the present day, we have regularly weighed the significance, respective merits and competing priorities of the “active” versus the “contemplative” life. Can they coexist?
Goods and chattels
About Face article
I have been reading systematically through the ads in the earliest issues of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, such a rich vein of information about certain aspects of daily life in Regency Sydney.
A colourful story from Sideshow Alley
Infamy, the macabre & the portrait
About Face article
From infamous bushranger to oyster shop display, curator Jo Gilmour explores the life of George Melville.
Magna Carta
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On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.
Prime Ministers
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On the day before the Hon. E. G. Whitlam, AC, QC, died last month, at the great age of 98, there were seven former prime ministers of Australia still living, plus the incumbent Mr. Abbott – eight in all.
An affray which deserves particular mention
Ben Hall and his gang outdone, 6 February 1865
About Face article
Bushranger Ben Hall and his cronies held around 40 people hostage in a pub north-west of Goulburn, telling their captives ‘don’t be alarmed; we only came here for a bit of fun’.
Dempsey's people
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Those of you who are active in social media circles may be aware that through the past week I have unleashed a blitz on Facebook and Instagram in connection with our new winter exhibition Dempsey’s People: A Folio of British Street Portraits, 1824−1844.
Audacity, audacity, audacity
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Angus delves into the biographies of two ambitious characters; Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir John Pope-Hennessy.
Missing Persons
Thomas Woolner in Australia
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Desperately seeking Woolner medallions
200 Years of Portraiture
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To celebrate his family bicentenary, Malcolm Robertson looks at the portraiture legacy left by his ancestors.
The Bath Butterfly
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The caricaturist and engraver James Gillray's biting satires about Sir Joseph Banks.
The medallion
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In recent years I have become fascinated by the so-called Sydney Cove Medallion (1789), a work of art that bridges the 10,000-mile gap between the newly established penal settlement at Port Jackson and the beating heart of Enlightenment England.
Desert Island Discs
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I agonized over the choice of four songs to take with me to the ABC Studios for Alex Sloan’s Canberra 666 afternoon program, a sort of iteration of the old BBC Desert Island Discs.
Stubbs and the horse
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One of the chief aims of George Stubbs, 1724–1806, the late Judy Egerton’s great 1984–85 exhibition at the Tate Gallery was to provide an eloquent rebuttal to Josiah Wedgwood’s famous remark of 1780: “Noboby suspects Mr Stubs [sic] of painting anything but horses & lions, or dogs & tigers.”
Cherish the brethren
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Fortunately, perhaps, there is no instruction manual for newly appointed art museum directors.
Robert Oatley AO
1928–2016
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The National Portrait Gallery mourns the loss of one our most generous benefactors, Robert Oatley AO.