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In this National Press Club address Andrew Sayers talks about how the ideas that have shaped us as a nation, and continue to shape our thinking, can be illuminated and debated in the National Museum of Australia.

Audio courtesy of the National Press Club.

Women are strongly represented in Australia’s food industry as producers, chefs, cookbook authors and creative writers. Chef Janet Jeffs, novelist Marion Halligan and food historians Adele Wessell and Donna Lee Brien explore women’s stories about food.

Curator Guy Hansen and passionate royal memorabilia collector Professor Peter Spearritt discuss Australia’s fascination with royalty and then showcase five items belonging to collectors from the audience.

Songman Archie Roach, former AFL star and Indigenous activist Michael Long, and Bill Johnson, whose Indigenous son Louis died tragically, with curator Stephen Munro, answer questions from the audience following the screening of the film Liyarn Ngarn.

After introductions by Andrew Sayers and Dr Margo Neale and a welcome to country by Matilda House, Mawalan 2 Marika speaks on behalf of the Marika family, followed by Franchesca Cubillo, senior Indigenous art curator at the National Gallery of Australia.

Anthropologists Howard Morphy and John Carty, and senior curator Mike Pickering, discuss Indigenous art from the Western Desert and Arnhem Land, and how art from both regions reflects concepts of Country, family and memory.

Margo talks about the new exhibition of Aboriginal artworks sent from Catholic missions in the north and west of Australia to the Vatican that recently opened at the Vatican’s Ethnological Museum and coincided with the canonisation of St Mary MacKillop.

The first Tuesday in November this year sees the running of the 150th Melbourne Cup. Curator Isa Menzies gives an insight into the race that stops the nation: from the glitz and glamour to the seamy underside of horseracing in Australia.

Artist Mandy Martin, historian Libby Robin and zoologist Chris Dickman join Guy Fitzhardinge from Desert Channels Queensland for an insightful discussion that explores partnerships, art and writings about conservation around our desert rivers.

Actor Rhys Muldoon, joined by the Director of the National Museum of Australia, Andrew Sayers, and curator of the Exploration and Endeavour exhibition bring to life the letters from the voyages of discovery to Australia.