Contributors
Daniel Thomas
Daniel Thomas, now retired and living in Tasmania, was once head of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery of Australia, and then director of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Articles
Netting the big and the little fish: monographs and biographies
Emeritus Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia and highly respected investigative curator and writer Daniel Thomas pulls out the stops in a far-ranging appraisal of art book publishing in Australia. He writes: "Once the artist is well dead, even if the book is 'only' a monograph, disregard the family and friends; we need to know everything."
Changing Climates in Arts Publishing
Indigenous Triennial
Culture Warriors: National Indigenous Art Triennial 07 Curator: Brenda L. Croft. National Gallery of Australia, 13 October 2007 - 10 February 2008; touring to Art Gallery of South Australia, 20 June - 31 August 2008; Art Gallery of Western Australia, 20 September - 23 November 2008; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, MarchMay 2009. (Note: The touring exhibition will be about 90 works rather than the 130 seen in Canberra.)
Work
Art History For Artists or For Others
Thomas looks at the role of Australian art history within many of the countries leading undergraduate art courses. Discussed in relation to art museums and globalised art practice. Artists featured in this text are Robert Macpherson, Rover Thomas, Sydney Long, David Hansen, Tommy McCrae, Howard Taylor, Hossein Valamanesh and Tony Tuckson.
Art History: Go Figure
Mildura - The Watershed for Sculpture: McCullough and Performance
The Mildura Sculpture Triennials directed by Tom McCullough seemed the liveliest and most ennjoyable art events held anywhere in Australia...
Dimensions: Sculpture in Australia
Distribution - Who Will Tame the Bete Noir?
The case for a viable national infrastructure.
Art & Education
Bad Names Improved
Suggestions for renaming many cultural institutions which are ambiguously named.
Museums on the Edge
Heritage Collections not Museums
In 1975 the Whitlam Government's Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections (the Piggott Committee, after its chairman P H Piggott) unsuccessfully recommended setting up of a Museum's Commission.
Museums on the Edge
The Dictionary of Australian Artists
Book review The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870
Edited by Joan Kerr
Oxford University Press Melbourne
RRP $200
Naive & Outsider Art
Sydney from Afar
For 20 years Daniel Thomas lived and worked in Sydney. In the 2 decades since he has left he has remained a frequent visitor, but he still sees Sydney from afar.
Sydney: The Big Shift
500 Women - Why Stop?
Book review
Heritage: the National Women's Art Book
edited by Joan Kerr
an Art and Australia book published by Craftsman House
RRP $150
The Face
National Portrait Gallery
Australia now has an embryonic National Portrait Gallery in five small rooms, one larger room and three corridors in Old Parliament House, Canberra. Photos of the opening and the inaugural exhibition 'About Face'.
The Face
Garden of Earthly Delights: Erotica at Carrick Hill
Gone from Carrick Hill before it became a public collection are three Stanley Spencer erotic paintings and William Dobell's 'The Duchess Disrobes' (two versions). Smith examines the nature of the collection of works by Sir Edward and Lady Ursula Haywood.
Art, Pornography & Censorship
Mediterranean Paradise: artists and the kitchen: David Strachan and John Olsen
Examination of the work of David Strachan and John Olsen from the 1950s in Europe to Australia in the 1980s and the pleasures of painting and food. Linking of painting with the recipes and philosophies of Elizabeth David.
Good Taste: Food, Consumption & Pleasure