Down Under

On June 28, we started the day with a return visit to and tour of the Parliament House . (I wrote about our first look at the Parliament House here .) Built in stages between 1856 and 1930, it has a facade of high steps and large columns a bit like the US Supreme Court building. The Parliament House is today the meeting place of the Parliament of Victoria. Between 1901 and 1927, it also served as the meeting place of the Parliament of Australia, when Melbourne was the temporary national capital. The Parliament of Victoria has two houses. Our tour started with the lower house, the Legislative Assembly (color coded in green). We then walked over to take a look at the ornate meeting room of the upper house, the Legislative Council (color coded in red). The Parliament House includes a parliamentary library, completed in 1861 and still used by parliamentary members and staff today. Between the meeting rooms of the lower and upper houses of the parliament is this hall with a statue of Queen...

On June 26, 2023, I went to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to participate in the XX International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology . The theme of this year’s conference was “Resurgent Authoritarianism: Sociology of New Entanglements of Religions, Politics, and Economies.” Below is the entrance to the convention center. Below is a photo of the first session I attended at the conference, on the topic of “Globalization, Alienation and the Cultural Patterns of Right-Wing Extremism.” Most people presented papers in person, but others presented virtually via Zoom.  No photos of the session on “Authority and Authoritarianism Revisited,” which I co-organized and where I presented a paper on June 26. But you can find the program book here. My paper is listed on page 390. 😀

On June 27, we went to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia’s oldest public art museum, to see its exhibition on the French post-Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947). Here’s a quick primer: “ Eight Essentials to Know About Pierre Bonnard .” And the description from the NGV’s website: “Opening in June 2023, the blockbuster Melbourne Winter Masterpieces® exhibition Pierre Bonnard presents the iridescent paintings of Bonnard within immersive scenography by Paris-based designer India Mahdavi.” At the entrance to the NGV is the Waterwall, a water curtain flowing down a stained-glass ceiling. Bonnard was a member of a group of late 19th-century artists who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew נביא ( navi ), meaning prophet. Like other members of the group, he was influenced by Japanese prints and woodcuts. I think you can see this influence in the first two pictures below. Below is Bonnard’s Nannies’ Promenade (1897), a decorative screen showing carri...