New Zealand artist Maurice Bennett crafted unique portraits of celebrities from pieces of toast.

Abstract art is showing new vitality. It can be Classical or Romantic, poised and precise, or energetic and expressionistic.

He's a doctor who writes novels in his spare time. He teaches writing, is developing a cosmetics range and doing a PhD. Is Sharad Paul NZ's busiest man?

COMMENT: I'm going to selectively quote from a Pablo Neruda poem titled To Wash a Child.

Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America includes art from the late 1960s to the present created by artists from eight different countries.

Local photographer Julia Glover has experienced the excitement of Africa without leaving town.

Creative New Zealand spent $650,000 to ensure the country is well-represented.

What is it like to live, as many of us in the Southern Hemisphere do, with our eyes forever on a different part of the world?

It goes to show, as Hare says, the audience - the way it reacts and responds and its current concerns - shapes theatre.

At 82, Gloria Steinem - the woman who spearheaded the women's liberation movement in the United States and beyond - was smoking hot.

Stephie Key this week graduates from the exclusive Paris College of Art, and her dad will make a flying visit to be there for the big day.

In a sense, it all began with a question from a small boy: "If we're going to catch the bus into Auckland Library, please can we go to the art gallery, too?"

Auckland Art Fair will show the best in contemporary art from New Zealand and the wider Pacific.

The winners of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards aren't the only local authors toasting success.

He cuts scrub to make ends meet and used to pretend to be looking at porn to hide his love of poetry from army mates.

It might more commonly be called the City of Sails, but to sociologist and historian Scott Hamilton Auckland is "a city of text", with multiple stories waiting to be told.

Auckland pianist Ben Fernandez and drummer Stephen Thomas have been roped in for the one-off performance.

Playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director Sir David Hare is taking a few days off in New Zealand.

They say all good things must come to an end and this year, the Auckland Writers Festival farewells one of its regular fixtures.

Police in Connecticut have searched the home of a 79-year-old gangster in connection with a stash of stolen paintings.

It is astounding to think no art gallery in Australasia has ever generated a comprehensive exhibition of work from South America until now.

Fifteen seconds: according to a number of surveys, that's the amount of time the "average" viewer spends looking at a painting and accompanying text.

Much exciting contemporary art aims not to promote meaning or message but rather to engage the eye with new visual experience.

COMMENT: Four hundred years after the writer's death it's time to acknowledge Shakespeare has less to offer the modern world.

This week marks 400 years since the death of our national poet. And yet his characters, the worlds he created, the thoughts he expressed are for all people and all time.

Taking dance to provinces and to the young is company focus.

One of the most popular exhibitions at the Mairangi Arts Centre, on Auckland's North Shore, is now on.