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The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Sydney Gets a Laneway

By Drusilla Modjeska

Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Circular Quay West re-opened on 29 March with a new wing, as the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Abutting the old building with its whiff of Art Deco, and glancing across to the Opera House, its stepped facade of white blocks creates a shifting pattern of light and shadow, as viewed from the harbour ferries, Bennelong Point or the lawn outside. T

Comment: ABC’s The Book Show and Ramona Koval

By Don Watson

Still, it might be apt enough for the ABC. What nobler ambitions does the national broadcaster have than uniting Australians in their feelings? The corporation’s charter talks about broadcasting “programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity; and … programs of an educational nature”. Same thing; different dialect.

Reflections on the Breeding House

In the Rat Room

By Gail Bell

In many ways it was the perfect job for a young recovering panic merchant. Geographical isolation, hours alone with non-speaking mammals, a heavy door between me and the other primates, and a routine to learn and master at my own speed. Nominally, I was a laboratory assistant in a facility that had no lab. The training on offer was of the passed-down from wiser heads variety and I could hope for no piece of paper at the completion of th

Diaries

While Not Writing a Book

By Helen Garner

Early in the morning, after a heavy night of babysitting, I’m watering out the back when I hear a shuffling sound. Olive comes up behind me in her spotted dressing-gown and slippers, looking hunched and dramatic, and holding a sheet of paper in one hand. “Read this,” she says. Dear Nanny I feel really Embarrased about last night and Ted got all the Boo

Fear & Loathing at the ABC

By Margaret Simons

The working day is infused with the irony of the clever, their undercutting humour, and the slight sense of disappointment that always accompanies passion. Public broadcasting, a former ABC executive comments, is a thing built on intellect and emotion. This ma