At 11:00 am, my special guest is Michael Turner, Senior Curator of Nicholson Museum at Sydney University. surprisingI recorded the interview at the museum and I know you will be as delighted as I was with Michael’s enthusiasm.

Many of the original items in the collection came from a shopping spree by Sir Charles Nicholson in Naples. Add to that the fact that Italian archaeology is Michael’s area and you’ve guessed the music for this week.

As always, I look forward to your company!

My special guest this week is artist Marion Borgelt, no stranger to Arts Wednesday. Marion has just remodelled a building to serve as her atelier and I caught up with her in the new studio to discuss what an artist – any artist or this one – requires in a studio. I know you will enjoy the conversation. That interview goes to air at 11:00 am.

Music this week is inspired by a program of Latin American music I heard last week on a South Coast Community Radio station. It made me realise how long it has been since I played this wonderful genre of music!

As always, I look forward to your company.

My special guest this week is Khaled Sabsabi, whose is one of the artists exhibiting in Edge of Elsewhere, a collaborative project between Gallery 4A and the Campbelltown Art Centre. Khaled’s installation, called corner,  is a continuation of his documentation of the Naqshbandi Sufi, a process that has seen him win the Blake Prize in 2011 and earned him the Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship, which enabled him to travel to Lebanon, Cyprus and Syria last year. I recorded our conversation with my new toy at Gallery 4A and I’ll play it at 11:00am.

I’ll continue music from the new CDs I bought in India and Singapore – some more Indian but also some others, including Gershwin and Frank Sinatra.

As always I look forward to your company!

We continue with Sydney By Design, this series talking about Sydney As It Could Be with Ed Lippmann. This week I’ll play Part 5, featuring Government Architect Peter Mould.

For the rest of the show it’s all India. I’ll be doing my own version of armchair traveller, with tales of wonderful people and places. The images I’ve selected are, firstly, the dining table for 101 guests used by the 6th Nizam of Hyderabad and still in the splendid Falaknuma Palace, now a hotel. The second is of the campsite, Chhatra Sagar and its lake setting at Nimaj in Rajasthan. I recorded a short interview with one of the owners and I’ll play that for you.

Needless to say I came back with CDs of Indian music and that’s what we’ll be hearing.

As always, I am looking forward to your company!

David McAllister AM

At about 10:40 am Ed Lippmann will co-present Sydney By Design – but this series has been dubbed Sydney As It Could Be. In Part 4 this week, we talk to Frank Sartor, former Lord Mayor of Sydney and former Minister for Planning in the NSW government.

At 11 am I will play you an interview I recorded on Monday with David McAllister AM, Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet, making a very welcome and now annual visit to Arts Wednesday. Our conversation is about uber cool and uber trendy in the world of ballet today.

Music will feature all my favourites for this year.

This will be my last show this year – I return to Arts Wednesday on 11 January 2012. Maisy Stapleton will present the show for the next 2 weeks and for Arts Wednesday January 4, I have prerecorded a Best of 2011, featuring interviews with Rabbi Zalman Kastel and Sheikh Hassam Farache about their work in Together For Humanity and then an interview with Hanifa Dean, about her book Abdul Vs The King.

Thank you all so much for sharing your Wednesday  mornings with me this year and I look forward to your company in 2012. Compliments of the season to you all!

My special guest at 11:00 am is David Gaunt AM, co-owner of the legendary Gleebooks. I met him at the store and we had a conversation about the future of books and bookstores as we know them today. I am sure you will enjoy the conversation.

To accompany the topic, all music will be about change!

As always, I am looking forward to your company.

David Gaunt AM

My special guest this week is Elger Esser, distinguished German artist whose new exhibition opened last week at the Dominik Mersch Gallery at Waterloo. Elger made a flying visit to Sydney and I was able to catch up with him in the studio last Thursday and I will play that interview at 11:00 am. Elger’s landscapes always include evidence of man, as you can see from the image below.

Elger is German, but his beautiful landscapes are in France and he, himself, had a French mother, so it seemed only fitting that I play bot French and German music.

As always I look forward to your company!

Chatressac

Click on the links below to listen to the Interviews.

Aboriginal Art, parts 1-3 (Introduction, Desert Art, Tiwi Art)

Aboriginal Art, parts 4-6 (The Kimberleys, Bark Painting, Urban Artists)

At 11:00 am I will have a conversation with 2 special guests: Georgia Wallace Crabbe and Flavia Fontes. curators of a new exhibition opening on Friday at Customs House. Called Connections, it explores the connections between Brazil and Australia across time and across disciplines. For example, did you know that the First Fleet stopped at Brazil on its way to Sydney, bringing with it Brazilian plants? It is a conversation I am anticipating with pleasure!

No marks for guessing what music I’ll be playing – Brazilian!

As always I look forward to your company.

View Of Cacavado Mountain, watercolour by Augustus Earle jr ca 1822