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The economy of Art Earlier this year, a painting by Jeffrey Smart sold for more than a million dollars. That puts him in a very small group of Australian artists whose works have sold for seven-figure sums. International art: Delhi style In the new world order, India is one of the economic powerhouses. It has a growth rate of more than seven and a half per cent, but also, since 2003, India has been saving and investing well over 30 per cent of its national income. Tango anyone? If there's one thing everyone knows about Buenos Aires it's that this is the home of the tango. The music, the sad songs and the dance all emerged in the poor barrios of Buenos Aires. Now, nearly 100 years later, there are hundreds of milongas, the traditional dance halls. And people come from all over the world to study this most intricate and seductive of dance and music forms. Muses and Mentors: Peter Knight And now, for our series Muses and Mentors this week. Artworks Feature: Matisse The Art Gallery of New South Wales predicts its big Picasso show (just opened in Sydney) will be so popular, it's put time limits on the entry tickets. There are 150 paintings, drawings and sculptures on loan from the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

Shut up little man! In 1987, two fresh-faced young men from the American mid-west moved to San Francisco and into an apartment building—a pink, ramshackle creation that they dubbed the Pepto-Bismol Palace. What happened then has since fuelled a pop-culture engine of sound, music, comic books, plays and films. Grey Gardens One of the most extraordinary documentary films ever made is Grey Gardens. This was made in 1975 by the brothers David and Albert Maysles. Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World Have you seen the range of t-shirts and bags and other apparel with designs that look like retro 50s tattoos? Lots of roses and swallows and skulls -- all very hip. Groovers amongst you will know that line of fashion is the work of design company Ed Hardy. But did you know that the real Ed Hardy is actually a revolutionary tattoo artist who began his art way back in the bad old days of the early 60s? There is a documentary film of the life and times of Ed currently screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Artworks Feature: Pedder Dreaming In the Artworks Feature, back to the 70s and a Lithuanian-born photographer and his passion for a pink quartz beach.

Cultural leadership Leadership, whether it's in business or politics, across the world there seems to be something of a state of crisis. Even in this country where we've got greater political and economic stability than most, our prime minister's hold on the job is endlessly contested. So does the cultural sector have anything to offer when it comes to leadership and managing change? John Holden is the UK's leading writer and researcher on cultural policy and management. He's also a former merchant banker. Operatic makeover Since he took up the job of artistic director at Opera Australia two years ago, Lyndon Terracini has been advocating change. He wants to attract larger and younger audiences to his company in particular and to opera in general. Lyndon Terracini has just delivered the annual Peggy Glanville-Hicks address, in both Sydney and in Melbourne and he's talking to Amanda Smith about some of the ideas he's exploring in that paper. The Pipe Once upon a time, in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, the small farming and fishing village of Rossport existed in a state of relative calm, which it had for countless generations. But the ambitions of a global oil company and the pressures of an energy-dependent world changed all that. Muses and Mentors: Daniel Crooks Daniel Crooks is a photographer and video artist. His art is very often about time; about slowing it down, changing it, making it stop or even run backwards. Artworks Feature: In search of Charles Rennie Mackintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) Scottish architect, designer and artist, is celebrated as one of the most significant talents of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His birthplace, Glasgow, is central to an understanding of his achievements and it's there that the most important of his surviving works is to be found, the Glasgow School of Art.

Occupy Museums Over the past few weeks, we've seen what started as the Occupy Wall Street protest spread and grow in various places around the world, including here in Australia. But there's another off-shoot of this kind of anti-capitalist, anti-greed protest that's specifically to do with art -- and it's called Occupy Museums. Creative Accounting In the light of the undiminishing global financial crisis, especially as it's being played out in the eurozone right now, an exhibition called Creative Accounting is more than pertinent. Creative Accounting looks at some of the stories that surround images and manipulation of currencies, the history of banking and a critique of the power of the money markets. Thomas Ostermeier What does the music of The Beach Boys -- one of the most influential pop music recording of the twentieth century -- have to do with the nineteenth century Norwegian play Hedda Gabler, written by Henrik Ibsen in 1890? Muses and Mentors: Rosslynd Piggott Quiet and contemplative is perhaps the best way to describe the work of visual artist Rosslynd Piggott. As well as painting, she's made installations, digital prints and some sculptural work -- her aesthetic and life influenced by a creative family background. Both her parents are artists and the leading Australian ceramicist Milton Moon is her uncle. Rosslynd Piggott recently visited Italy on an Australian Council residency at the British School at Rome and it was while there that she discovered the Garden of Ninfa, which has proved to be an inspiration in her work. Artworks Feature: Make Noise Not War When you think of sound art do you think of John Cage's famous 4 minutes 33? The experimental sound scene these days takes many different forms. Suzanne Donisthorpe goes down into the basement of the quirky Donkey Wheel House in Melbourne where there are people making music from everything from burnt-out turntables to giant metal rings. It's wild, a bit geeky, extremely hip and occasionally -- very noisy...