Tag: playlist

  • Venice and the Biennale – part two

    The Venice Biennale’s traditional site is the Giardini, public gardens created by Napoleon at the start of the 19th Century. The first years of the exhibition saw more than 200,000 people attend the venues and over the decades since buildings have been erected to house country pavilions, showcasing artists and ideas from around the globe,…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a curated playlist from Spotify is made for the blog. The playlist references articles in some way and this week it features music from and about Venice, as well as pieces that have a link with the artists who are represented at the Biennale.

  • Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi

    Venice has long been known for its music, art and artists. In the narrow route along a canal that leads past Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery of European and American art is a small shop with windows that tell of the artistic eye of Hélène Kuhn Ferruzzi. Enchanting and wondrous, this shop is a destination for the…

  • Lobola – negotiating an African wedding

    Lobola – negotiating an African wedding

    Thank you to our South African reader who sent this in to share. In Africa, weddings are often marked by a “bride price” – a payment that signals the negotiations for the joining together of two families. Lobola is a cultural practice that differs across the continent, and in South Africa it is often part…

  • Conversation and Cloth – Hokitika

    The West Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand is full of history and tales. In the middle of the Southern Winter, as the world turns and seasons change, a star cluster rises in the sky. This is known in New Zealand as Matariki, a shortened version of “Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea” (the eyes of the…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    The playlist this week, as always, references articles on the blog. It is a curated list of interesting and unusual pieces, some old and some new, in different genres, all related in some way to the blog. In this week’s playlist, “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” by Béla Bartók is included in its entirety. This work, the…

  • A tapa sampler

    The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Aotearoa’s national museum, has a unique taonga: a book of tapa samples. This book, rather grandly entitled “A Catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the Southern hemisphere : with a particular account of the manner of the…

  • Can indigenous knowledge help mathematics?

    A university in Australia, the Australian National University, has developed a course in mathematics that includes teaching about Indigenous Knowledge. For anyone interested in mathematics, particularly where the arts are concerned – see the read more section below – a course that includes this kind of knowledge is invaluable. There are many ways of explaining…

  • The Coast Salish Woolly Dog

    The Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States has a long tradition of weaving practised by the Coast Salish people. Many readers might be familiar with the blankets and cloaks that incorporate colour and pattern distinctive to the region. What you may not know is that some of those pieces might have been made…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week a playlist on the streaming platform, Spotify, is created to go along with the blog. The list relates to articles on the blog, some obvious and others not. The playlist brings together music from diverse sources and genres, linked through common themes. To hear the playlist click on the player above or open…