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Gotta catch 'em all
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Angus Trumble grabs his life jacket and rides the Pokémon GO tsunami.
A papal pet encounter
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In honour of the launch of the Popular Pet Show, Angus recalls a diplomatic incident with an over-excited golden retriever.
Not perspiring, but glowing.
The cultural history of radiance.
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Angus Trumble explores the creative manifestations of radiance.
Tribute: Mary Isabel Murphy
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The Chairman, Board, Director and all the staff of the National Portrait Gallery mourn the loss of our Benefactor, Mary Isabel Murphy.
Portrait dendrochronology
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Angus's latest Trumbology is accompanied by the following caveat: 'This one is reeeeeeally geeky.'
A bear of great substance
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Just in time for Christmas, Angus reflects on the most special present he has ever received.
Audacity, audacity, audacity
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Angus delves into the biographies of two ambitious characters; Sir Stamford Raffles and Sir John Pope-Hennessy.
Anangu landscape learning
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Angus' initial perception of Uluru shifts, as he comes to see it as central to the entire order of Anangu life.
Cooey! An Australian Song
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"Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—Love has caught the strain, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey, Coo-ey—it whispers back again." The “Australian lady” who composed these fruity lyrics was none other than Desda— Jane Davies, sometime Messiter (née Price) of Leddicott, Lavender Bay.
Humdinger
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At a meeting by teleconference of the National Portrait Gallery Foundation last week, I found myself reporting that our forthcoming exhibition So Fine is going to be “a humdinger,” whereupon Tim Fairfax chuckled and said that he hadn’t heard that expression for years.
Cherish the brethren
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Fortunately, perhaps, there is no instruction manual for newly appointed art museum directors.
Centenary of ANZAC
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Just now we pause to mark the centenary of ANZAC, the day when, together with British, other imperial and allied forces, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli at the start of the ill-starred Dardanelles campaign.
A reflection on conversation pieces
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There is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, an English painting, datable on the basis of costume to about 1745, that has for many years exercised my imagination.
Remembering Ursula
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I first knew Dr. Hoff when in 1986, long after retiring from the National Gallery of Victoria, she taught a graduate seminar on Rembrandt.
Empirical art
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Several years ago I came across this curious painting on the racks in a distant, dusty corner of the store room in the basement of the Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. Since then the mystery surrounding it has never been far from my mind.
Magna Carta
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On this day eight hundred years ago at Runnymede near Windsor, King John signed Magna Carta.