A giant hand called Quasi made world headlines. Dane Mitchell's fake transmitting trees at the Venice Biennale were joined by a real fallen tree during flooding. Giant woven works by the Mata Aho Collective hung in London and Ottawa, and Lisa Reihana's work was simply everywhere. Back home, we gnawed over how to commemorate the visit of Captain Cook 250 years ago, and we reopened big files on Modernist artists Schoon, Walters, McCahon, Henderson and Hodgkins. In the year of Ihumatao, attention to the Manus Island detainees and climate emergency protests, were contemporary artists given enough oxygen? With Mark to discuss are three outstanding commentators and supporters of the arts. In Christchurch, Warren Feeney, known for his lead roles with newspapers Artbeat and The Press, Pantograph Punch critic and a curator at this year's Auckland Art Fair Francis McWhannell, and Curator of Matauranga Maori at Te Papa and coeditor of a new journal of Maori art Ate, Matariki Williams.