Mona Gallery Hobart

I have just returned from three days in Hobart, attending the opening of MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. It is a $200 million, quixotic project of Tasmanian businessman David Walsh. Walsh commissioned the museum from architect Nonda Katsalidis, filled it with his own art and made admission free.

MONA benefactor David Walsh has great taste in art but questionable taste in T-shirts. Pic: Matthew Newton.

Walsh has a scientific mind but an artistic temperament. In his interview with Andrew Frost he says that if he could make art, he would. He has an intellectual fascination with Darwinian evolution, time, ancient cultures and the dark areas of our humanity.

The inaugural exhibition is called Monanism, a play on the word onanism (masturbation). MONA and Monanism were exciting and I want to put down a few thoughts now, while the experience is fresh in my mind.

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  • taurfage says:

    08:13am | 10/04/12

    best for you <a >eveningdressd.webeden.co.uk/</a>  for gift Read more »

  • Me says:

    05:48am | 05/04/12

    OP,  Walshy (if you’re still on here) and anyone else who can, Got any tips for artists looking to relocate to Tassie? It’s pretty much Melbourne or Sydney’s Inner West if you want to be around galleries on the mainland.  But Tassie is so much nicer.  Inner West is a… Read more »

 

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