[KAHAN] Adelaide Festival of Arts, March 12-26 1960 : souvenir programme.

Adelaide : Adelaide Festival of Arts Executive Committee, 1960. Quarto (275 x 210 mm), colour pictorial wrappers (some light staining to lower wrapper), staple bound; inside wrappers with colour advertisements, pp 71 [1], photographic illustrations, mostly b/w but including a double-page of colour plates of Louis Kahan’s costume designs for Rigoletto, a full-page colour plate of Diego Rivera’s The Flower Vendor, a full-page colour view of the interior of the Bonython Hall, a double-page in b/w devoted to American jazz artist Dave Brubeck and his quartet (Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, Joe Morello) – note that Take Five had first been recorded only a few months before – and a full-page with b/w illustration on Charles Mountford’s collection of Arnhem Land bark paintings and artefacts; advertisements (some colour); contents pristine, a very good copy.

This is the superbly produced programme for the inaugural Adelaide Festival of Arts (now known as the Adelaide Festival), which would develop into one of the world’s most celebrated arts festivals. It is generally considered to be the most important event in the Australian arts calendar. In 1960 the Festival mounted 105 different shows covering almost all aspects of the arts.