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Robin Maconie - Latest News [Page 1]
Robin Maconie: Cooking the Books at Frankfurt
Thursday, 21 July 2011, 11:27 am | Robin Maconie
We are required to believe that because New Zealand has only the equivalent reading population of a London suburb, the only books worth publishing here are those that will sell in quantity to a local readership, and since the local readership is assumed ... More >>
Robin Maconie: Murdoch Stuffed
Tuesday, 19 July 2011, 2:14 pm | Robin Maconie
On page 133 of Bill Oliver’s complacent and self-serving memoir Looking for the Phoenix – a book without an index – the veteran historian describes with typically arch insouciance how the London launch in 1981 of his Oxford History of New Zealand ... More >>
Guilt-Edged Legacy
Saturday, 19 February 2011, 5:41 pm | Robin Maconie
The recent passing of historian Dame Judith Binney and piously abbreviated editorializing on her legacy in national media are an opportunity to reflect on the parlous and debilitated state of historical scholarship in New Zealand. More >>
Robin Maconie: Absent Friends
Monday, 7 February 2011, 2:39 pm | Robin Maconie
Greg O’Brien has written a splendid new book on Graham Percy, the versatile New Zealand artist who died in 2008. Designer of the logo for Bruce Mason’s End of the Golden Weather , Percy made his name in New Zealand as a stylish creator of sixties ... More >>
Can’t talk now, I’m on the throne
Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 3:03 pm | Robin Maconie
Are movies real? Do they speak to us of real people and events, or simply weave stories that distract attention from everyday life? The difference is not in the story, but how the story is read. To the easily deluded, all life is entertainment. (The word ... More >>
Defending the Open Society: the Heritage of Denis Dutton
Saturday, 1 January 2011, 12:41 pm | Robin Maconie
The untimely death of Denis Dutton in December at 66 years of age threatens to sever a tenuous but vital link connecting New Zealand intellectual life with the international currency of ideas represented by his online site Arts and Letters Daily, hitherto ... More >>
When Disaster Strikes: Saving Music for the Nation
Tuesday, 15 June 2010, 1:17 pm | Robin Maconie
Wellington the City of Culture is a culture of bureaucracies: the City Council, the two Universities, the NZSO, Creative New Zealand, Government, Education. All interlocked in the ill-starred merger called the New Zealand School of Music from whom the Key ... More >>
NZSO, Music Schools ponder values of real estate
Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 10:27 am | Robin Maconie
The NZSO and two New Zealand university schools of music are currently embroiled in controversial real estate negotiations to relocate to new buildings on small parcels of open space in their respective city centres. More >>
Widespread disbelief at NZSO digital home proposal
Monday, 9 November 2009, 9:47 am | Robin Maconie
“Naive”, “desperate”, and “a hoax” are among disbelieving responses to the Grow Wellington launched Lilburn Studio Trust bid to garner funds for a curiously styled $20 million digital centre for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to record ... More >>
NZ School of Music: the real issues
Monday, 11 May 2009, 11:45 am | Robin Maconie
Failure of the New Zealand School of Music merger and Ilott Green building programme, the latter now postponed to 2013, in practical terms indefinitely, could have been predicted from the start, according to music professionals. Alarm bells began ringing ... More >>
