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Winter Sonata Drama Tour in Seoul

Largely regarded as the cultural capital of Australia, Melbourne offers world-class arts and cultural heritage institutions and internationally recognised artists, while imaginative design and architecture abound.

The good thing about Melbourne," Alibrando says, "is you've got accessible culture, so even people running for the train can see art without having to actually go to a gallery."

WHAT do most Australians know about Indonesian art? What role do the arts play in the picture they present of contemporary Indonesia? Not much, perhaps.

We heard from a young Indonesian filmmaker about thriving, youthful film communities across Indonesia and among Indonesian students in Melbourne; we shared some of the songs, stories and images collected by an Australian artist from northern Australian and eastern Indonesian communities once linked by ocean trade; we saw gigantic puppets created by young earthquake survivors near Yogyakarta, performing a zany new version of the Ramayana legend under the inspired leadership of Ian Pidd and the Snuff Puppet group.

Among the treasures hidden from sight at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History are the world’s biggest egg, Stephen Jay Gould’s seashells and Vladimir Nabokov’s collection of butterfly genitalia. So when the museum’s curator asked photographer Mark Sloan if he’d be interested in photographing the most unique specimens from their behind-the-scenes collection, Sloan was glad to oblige. In exchange, he got the tour of a lifetime.

“It came with its own curator. He sat there with that egg for the entire duration of my photo shoot, which was quite long. He had white gloves on and was the only one who could touch it,” said Sloan. “The one time the curator went out to the bathroom, my assistant pretended to flick the egg.” The museum preferred the flick-free version.

South Korea's television soap operas are finding big audiences overseas, including here in the Bay Area, as well as other major American cities with large Asian populations.

South Korean studios invested heavily in state—of—the—art production facilities, embodying the latest digital technology. Today, many Japanese films are shot in Korea, to take advantage of lower costs and better facilities there. And studio tours for tourists have become a big business.