Australian Bicentenary A new musical "Manning Clark's History of Australia", directed by John Bell, that was loosely based on the life of historian Manning Clark opened in January at Princess Theatre (Melbourne) to coincide with the Bicentenary, but facing poor reviews and concomitant lack of attendance, closed before the end of February. Significant improvements to Australian roads were made through the "Australian Bicentennial Road Development Program". The event triggered debate on Australian national identity, Aboriginal rights, historical interpretation and multiculturalism. The event was widely viewed as controversial. Planning for the event raised issues of national identity and historical interpretation. Some wanted to
Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna painting, quite reminding one of a Paul Veronese, so bright and full of light. Albert was enchanted with it—so much so that he made me buy it." The English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote that the work proved Leighton's "great power of rich arrangement." His brother, the art critic and writer William Rossetti, was not as enchanted: "His picture has largeness, but not greatness; style, but not intensity; design rather than thought; arrangement rather than conception: it is individual, not specially original." Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna, originally called Cimabue's [Celebrated] Madonna [is] Carried in Procession through the Streets