Micahel Hurst dons the Fool costume for King Lear, three decades after first tackling the role. By Barney McDonald.

The cover of Max Emanuel Cencic's Venezia says it all. The Croatian countertenor is all elegance, in dinner jacket and cravat, in front of an ornate wallpaper that might adorn the walls of a Venetian palazzo.

Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines leaves next week for Queensland after 17 years of working towards the gallery’s expansion and rejuvenation. But he’ll be back one day, he tells Linda Herrick.

British author Deborah Moggach returns to the rickety hotel setting that earned her big box-office success, writes Stephen Jewell

Pictures from the opening night of the Auckland Arts Festival performance by French pyrotechnical wizards Groupe F

Just go see this. French pyrotechnical wizards Groupe F offer a superlative, splendiferous, explosive extravaganza. Artistic director Christophe Berthonneau and his team, and Red Leap Theatre, are to be congratulated.

Walking tours - especially those guided by a remote, apparently all-seeing, all-knowing central HQ - are full of tantalising possibilities: where will I be going? How will I know how to get there?

Cantina opens with a velvety voiced crooner promising to "shoot the moon right out of the sky" and honours that with an exhilarating acrobatics display set in the seductive ambience of a 1920s speak-easy.

Pacific Les Mis musical hugely leavened by romance, humour and funky 70s style

A Dunedin artist has been invited to show his work at one of the world's most prestigious art exhibitions.

What Auckland's cultural scene does lack, when it comes to Ateed and Aucklanders in general, is a true appreciation of the goodies that are on offer on their doorsteps.

The body of artist Ralph Hotere arrived to emotional scenes at Mitimiti in Northland this afternoon.

Thousands of people filled St Joseph's Cathedral in Dunedin today to farewell celebrated artist Ralph Hotere.

In Mitimiti yesterday, John Martin was at the urupa, the cemetery where his cousin Ralph Hotere will lie when his body is flown by helicopter to the beachside marae.

Artist Ralph Hotere, 81, who was one of only a handful of people to be made a Member of the Order of New Zealand, died peacefully in Dunedin yesterday.

A series of Ralph Hotere prints are being exhibited at University of Canterbury this week in a tribute to one of New Zealand's greatest artists who died yesterday.

Tributes are flowing for 81-year-old sculptor, painter and collaborative artist Ralph Hotere, who died surrounded by family in Dunedin.