COMMENT | Art and travel ...

Browsing through the email news headlines, I note a story about Salvador Dali's theatre-memorial in Figueres, Spain in the travel section of today's bulletin. Still disappointed by the ABC's decision to axe its Radio National program, The Deep End, as the latest loss of arts coverage in the media (and this blog is full of such reports from around the world), I can't help but wonder if travel sections and writers might gradually pick up the slack. Unlike everyday life (note of sarcasm), travel and tourism seem to go hand in hand with cultural experiences such as visits to 'edgy' cultural precincts or pilgrimages to the great masters in their resting places. While alternative arts and culture seem to garner no interest from the local media, tourism and travel guides highlight them as adding much colour and interest and well worth visiting.

What's particularly notable about this intersection between travel and art is that it seems to hark to an older style of art writing that David Carrier describes in his book Writing About Visual Art and something akin to Alain de Botton's undertaking in The Art of Travel.