Poor governance sickens the Arts : we have the cure, Kenneth Myer Lecture for the George Fairfax Fellowship

We need to know more about governance in cultural nonprofit organisations (NPOs). Can good governance prevent financial crises in arts organisations? A vast research project has helped find the answers. Lack of artistic success is not the main cause of financial distress. NPOs in financial distress often have weak governing processes. Their board members need to know more about the problems leading to the crisis. We propose a governance framework to better monitor NPOs’ external and internal environments. Then we present the reactions to this governance framework from interviews with NPO managers. Finally, we report results from arts organisation consultancy and reconcile these findings with the ones collected through interviews.

A lecture for lecturers

Visiting education professor Trevor Gale believes the Monash University Gippsland campus is an example to the rest of Australia of ways to make tertiary education accessible and relevant to its community.

Professor Gale is the founding director of the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education and spoke to The Express after addressing academic staff at the campus on Friday.

Intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in cancer patients treated with bevacizumab : the Memorial Sloan-Kettering experience

Background: Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody targeting vascular endothelial growth factor approved for recurrent glioblastoma (GBM), metastatic breast, colorectal and non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC). There has been a potentially increased risk of intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in patients receiving bevacizumab.

Methods: We retrospectively identified patients with ICH who received bevacizumab between 1 January 2001 and 10 January 2009.

Results: We identified 1024 patients with ICH, 4191 patients who received bevacizumab and 12 (0.3%) who met both our criteria. There were eight women and four men with a median age of 66 years. Primary cancers were ovarian (n = 3), NSCLC (n = 3), colon (n = 1), angiosarcoma (n = 1) and GBM (n = 4). Intracranial tumors were present in 9 of the 12 patients; the remaining three (25%) had no evidence of intracranial pathology. Two hundred and fifty-seven patients with these same primary pathologies and brain tumors were treated with bevacizumab; ICH was seen in nine (3.7%), which was comparable to the 3.6% frequency seen in comparable patients not receiving bevacizumab.

Conclusions: ICH with bevacizumab treatment in this population is rare and does not appear to increase its frequency over the baseline rate of ICH in a comparable population. Most bevacizumab-related ICH occurs into central nervous system tumors but spontaneous hemorrhages were seen.

On memory, affect and atonement : the Long Tan memorial cross(es)

This article analyses the history of the Long Tan Memorial in Vietnam in order to open up a space for engaging with the memorialisation of war as something that can go beyond nationalistic sentimentality and create a space for more complex political and social engagements. In doing so I am concerned with exploring the value of an approach to heritage significance that prioritises relationships between places and peoples rather than authenticity and originality. I explore this question by making use of the fact that the Australian War Memorial has borrowed the original Long Tan Cross now in the custodianship of the Dong Nai Museum for a special exhibition to commemorate the Vietnam War. The Australian Vietnam Volunteers Reconstruction Group, who has official custodianship of the replica cross at the Long Tan Memorial site in Vietnam, has expressed disquiet over the loan. I use the Acting Director’s reply to the AVVRG’s Chairman to open up a discussion about the differences in meanings between these two crosses, what underlies these and how we might theorise them in order to open up an understanding of war heritage that recognises its potentials and its limitations.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park : an architectural consignation

Like many major urban developments designed by modernist architects. Kenzo Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is considered by some to be founded upon tabula rasa- a blank site and/or architectural approach unconstrained by historic and aesthetic precedents. Tabula rasa is associated with a tendency to 'forget' or repress the past in order to opportunistically move on with the future. Constructed near 'ground zero' - on the site of just part of the established urban environment obliterated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945- the tabula rasa here, however, is not achieved simply due to a conscious or critical urban design decision to move away from past urban forms and practices but through an unforseen trauma. This paper questions the application of an unqualified label of tabula rasa to Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Focusing on Tange's writing about the Peace Park - a 1954 article entitled "Hiroshima Plan 1946-1953" in particular - and reflecting on the repeated architectural returns of Kenzo Tange and Associates to the site, this paper raises Freud's "Mystic Writing Pad" as an alternative model. It argues for a more complex consideration of the memory-work of Tange's written practice and the light it may bring to a reconsideration of this foundational architectural project within his oeuvre.