MONA -- A Museum of Old and New Art at the end of the world

Designed like a Borgesian labyrinth, lit like a nightclub, arranged like a grand cabinet of wonders, MONA, since it opened [in 2011] on a remote island with a population of 500,000, has attracted more than 700,000 people [1.5 million as of June, 2015].  Visitors came first from Tasmania, then the rest of Australia, and now increasingly the world – a growing caravan of stars and celebrities, art lovers, aficionados, camp followers and the curious. In two years, MONA has become Tasmania’s foremost tourist attraction and a significant driver of its languishing economy. Lonely Planet recently listed Hobart as one of the world’s top ten cities to visit in 2013, largely because of MONA.

-- Richard Flanagan, “At home with David Walsh, the gambler,” The Monthly, February 2013

David Walsh, the visionary creator of MONA, claims to believe that life is shaped by “the coin toss” of arbitrary chance.  Heads, you end up working as a tax agent (as he did for less than a year as a lad); tails, you create a $180 million museum at the end of the world.  Walsh is, of course, speaking as a professional gambler, or rather a man who is rumored to make $8 million a year through his gambling activities.  In turn, this money finances the estimated $8 million a year operating loss required to keep The Museum of Old and New Art going; MONA then contributes an estimated $100 million to the local economy, which is huge in one of Australia's poorest states.  Walsh was raised close to where he located his museum, in a low-income neighborhood of Hobart, and he has made admission free for all Tasmanian residents.  

Walsh’s success as a gambler is not the result of luck, however.  It was hard earned through extensive research, investment in large betting pools, and complex computing programs that reduce risk.  The success of MONA, which is often portrayed as Walsh's ultimate and most wild gamble, was won by attention to every detail of the unusual architecture, sumptuous exhibition design, curatorial daring, and an innovative and highly crafted visitor experience. 

MONA combines cutting edge technology with ancient paradigms to reinvent aspects of the museum experience.  Three levels of windowless exhibition spaces are carved into the living rock of a sandstone bluff.  Think burial in a royal Egyptian tomb, a mad scientist's lair, art seen by torchlight in the caves of Lascaux, and Georges Bataille’s dark fantasies.  In this lush, dimly lit setting, the dominant themes for the permanent collection are sex and death; in fact, for $75k you can have your cremated remains stashed at MONA.  You descend to the galleries riding in a transparent elevator set into a luminous glass shaft – a tube-shaped pipeline through the heart of the museum.   Like a space-age Dante, you leave daylight behind and navigate the underworld of the galleries using The O -- one of the most elegant iPod guides I’ve ever experienced.  This gently glowing companion replaces label text, eliminates the need for conventional lighting, and satisfies your curiosity.  You can read curatorial text (push the “Art Wank” button) and listen to audio clips with curators, artists, and Walsh himself.  The layout of the museum is deliberately mysterious and disorienting.  But the iPod hanging around your neck and breathing into your ear has a GPS system so accurate that at the touch of a button it jumps to the object in front of you, and lists the things nearby.  Using the O gives you the sensation of being inside a virtual space and navigating by hyperlink.  The result is an experience that mixes the sensations of exploration, risk, and safety.

Walsh’s first try at building a museum featured his collection of ancient and tribal art, and MONA – the Museum of Old And New Art -- mixes these with contemporary work.  There are Sumerian tablets and Egyptian sarcophagi, including one surrounded by Stygian pools of water that harks back to the entertaining Victorian dinner party practice of unwrapping a mummy by using a scanning technology to reveal the corpse down to its skeleton.   

Esto es peor (This is worse) from The Disasters of War, Francisco Goya, 1812-1815

On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell, Stephen Shabrook, 2008

Violence enters some of the works.  A terrifying print by Goya (from the Disasters of War, 1812-1815) is hung next to On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell -- a chilling life-size sculpture of a young suicide bomber by Stephen Shanabrook.  The latter was inspired by a photograph of the freakish aftermath of the detonation, which left the boy’s face and torso intact.  The image haunted the artist’s imagination until he created an uncanny life-size sculpture, a kind of death mask, made even more appalling by being fashioned in cast chocolate.  The connection between these two unflinching artists -- separated by 200 years -- is clear.   

I hesitated to include photos of these "portraits" by Greg Taylor.  Are they exploitative or liberating? Pornographic or feminist?  Ultimately, I decided to include them to share the experience of seeing one of MONA's most written-about works, and let readers decide.  The women involved were willing to let this private part of themselves be seen, albeit anonymously, and it doesn't seem morally right to censor this work. Two from a series of  150 porcelain sculptures entitled Cunts and Other Conversations, by Greg Taylor and friends, 2008-2009.

Around the corner, 140 small sculptures -- porcelain vulvas -- hang in a long row that makes its way along darkened corridors.  Disembodied “portraits,” each unique work is framed in a spot light.  It's hard to know what to think; is it offensive that this series takes sexist objectification of women to an absurd place? Or is it liberating that this always hidden part of a woman's body is made public, without any shame?  On "O" the artist explains that "it's about the whole issue of women's body issues...the place of women...for thousands of years being told that they're stupid, they're ugly, and they stink."  Replicas -- ironically made of soap -- are offered for sale in the gift shop and are a popular item.  This work is mentioned in nearly every article I have read about MONA, along with Wim Delvoye's infamous Cloaca, a giant room-sized machine which simulates the human digestive process, culminating every few hours in mechanical, but very smelly, elimination of excrement.  

Zizi, the Affectionate Couch, Twenty121

But the MONA collection is not summed up by these two works, despite their pervasive appearance in media reports.  There are hundreds of diverse works on display, including many that are funny, beautiful, playful, sinister, graceful, or strange.  Two that I particularly enjoyed were Zizi the Affectionate Couch created by the artists collective Twenty121 and Artifact, a large sculpture by Gregory Barsamian.  Zizi squawks, squeals, shudders and squirms in response to your movements on her cushy faux-fur seat.  The artists describe this friendly bench as "a mixture of shaved poodle, a fluffy cat and an exotic sea slug.  Zizi growls when sat upon, purrs when touched and groans with delight when you stroke her fur.  If left alone, she mews for attention."  Artifact appears as the discarded head of a gigantic automaton; a series of small windows give you a glimpse of the thoughts, dreams or memories still swirling within.  The scenes are created by an old-fashioned method of animation using rotating sculptural elements and a strobe light to generate the illusion of movement.

MONA’s above ground spaces complement its subterranean chambers.  A white pavilion perches on the hilltop, designed by James Turrell to frame a rectangle of sky and the surrounding vistas – expansive views of the Derwent River that flows down to Hobart’s harbor.  At sunrise and sunset, a suite of changing colored light washes across the ceiling, manipulating our perceptions of color and depth.  No surprise to discover that one of Walsh’s childhood interests was astronomy; he commissioned Turrell to add a celestial temple to his modern necropolis, one that invites us to contemplate the subtle transitions of dusk and dawn, the movement from day to night, and night to day.  (And, by the way, the work is entitled Amarna – after the city built by the “heretical” Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and dedicated to monotheistic worship of the sun god.)

Amarna, James Turrell, 2015

During our visit, we met David Walsh briefly; we later learned he has an apartment in the museum.  We guessed it was him, getting into a Tesla parked in a space marked “RESERVED – GOD”.  Asked if he was, indeed, God, he replied modestly “Well, no, but I’m acquainted with him.”  However, at MONA, I am convinced that Walsh does an excellent job fulfilling the jobs of both Zeus and Hades, ruling equally over the realms of light --  rational intellect -- and dark -- subterranean myth.

For more information:

Richard Flanagan, "At home with David Walsh, the Gambler," The Monthly (originally published in shorter form in The New Yorker)

Vicky Frost, "Mona's David Walsh: 'Now I'm the Arbiter of Good Taste, the thing I abhor,'" The Guardian
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, Australia's Temple of the Weird," Slate