In the hands of playwright Dean Parker the intrigues swirling around New Zealand's Moscow Embassy in 1947 provide the raw material for a sophisticated, entertaining and intelligent piece of theatre.

Dame Susan Devoy is now an unwitting muse for the nation's creativity, inspiring not fanfares but raspberries.

An art auction of "unprecedented quality and calibre" and boasting some of the biggest names in contemporary New Zealand art pulled in around $2 million when the works went under the hammer in Auckland last night.

Waihi Beach photographer Cathy Franzoi has been placed third in the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards and will have her image - of her three sons on an old sofa - on digital display at Somerset House in London.

Aspiring, novelists, poets and playwrights were paid to write by the Sargeson Fellowship, a scheme now at risk, writes Graeme Lay.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra can be justly proud of being just two seats short of a full house on Thursday for the first concert in its Bayleys Great Classics Series.

Open a cupboard at the new Artstation show, Cupboards, and you'll find shelves loaded with nostalgia.

When I first heard that Barbara Anderson had died I toured our bookshelves looking for the book that had me fall in love with her.

Janet McAllister reviews Coronation Street On Stage and finds it a thin and airy skit show with the production values of a smash hit musical.

The take from an auction of rare New Zealand paintings is expected to top $2 million.

Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a glass box in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

Choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet take the biblical story of the Tower of Babel with its smiting of the human race into painful divisions of nationality and language.