Sydney media are abuzz with stories about the lavish taxpayer-funded expenses bill run up by Art Gallery of New South Wales director Dr Michael Brand. First Daily Telegraph reporter Christopher Harris dug up the statements of Brand’s public-purse credit card, which listed several restaurant bills [...]
Joseph Lycett Aborigines using fire to hunt kangaroos c.1820, National Library of Australia BOOK REVIEW By JUDITH WHITE Worried about the prospects for life on earth? Well, we have just been given a message of hope born out of profound historical knowledge. On the eve [...]
By JUDITH WHITE My Uncle Dick was a Manchester electrician and lifelong trade unionist who survived the Thai-Burma railway in World War Two, but never afterwards joined a military parade or wrapped himself in the Union Jack. His prisoner-of-war diary, previously unpublished, forms part of [...]
A story of family, survival and the pain inflicted by empire Children of Coal: A Migrant's Story by Judith White, 273pp, ISBN 9781649698391 Here is my memoir of growing up in the North of England when it still ran on coal, and of the remarkable people [...]
The Powerhouse Museum remains under threat from the cultural vandalism of the NSW Government. Six weeks ago the museum’s supporters were celebrating Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s backflip decision to retain the museum at Ultimo. But the backflip has turned into a 360-degree somersault. Staff are under [...]
In an extraordinary about-turn, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that she will retain the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo and build a new museum at Parramatta. The fight to save the southern hemisphere’s finest museum of applied arts and sciences and its priceless 500,000-object collection [...]
By JUDITH WHITE The heritage core of the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo, Sydney, is no longer open to the public. On 30 June the NSW Government will close it for good and begin tearing the institution apart. The threatened area of the award-winning building includes [...]
Museum showdown on Macquarie Street By JUDITH WHITE Today, Monday 18 May, is International Museum Day – so it’s ironic that some museum supporters and professionals in NSW will spend the day in yet another effort to protect cultural institutions from the predations of the [...]
Carriageworks and the Powerhouse: failures of government policy The collapse of Sydney arts and entertainment centre Carriageworks has sent tremors through the besieged arts sector; but it also shows up the deep flaws in the NSW Government’s cultural policy, and is fuelling demands to halt [...]
Harwin's fall NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin’s resignation on 10 April has sparked renewed calls for Premier Gladys Berejiklian government to abandon his cherished $1.5 billion, developer-driven plan to demolish the Powerhouse Museum at Ultimo and relocate to a flood-prone site (pictured above) at Parramatta. [...]
