Museum Of Old And New Art
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The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the
Moorilla Moorilla Estate is a winery located in the suburb of Berriedale, 12 km north of the city centre of Hobart, in Tasmania. Establishment It was established in 1958 by Italian-Australian former textile merchant Claudio Alcorso. Moorilla Es ...
winery on the Berriedale peninsula in
Hobart Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
,
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, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses
ancient Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian language, Sumerian c ...
,
modern Modern may refer to: History * Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Phil ...
and
contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...
from the David Walsh collection. Noted for its central themes of sex and death, the museum has been described by Walsh as a "subversive adult
Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...
". MONA was officially opened on 21 January 2011. Along with its frequently updated indoor collection, Mona also hosts the annual Mona Foma and
Dark Mofo Dark Mofo is the winter version of the MONA FOMA festival, also held in Tasmania. With many of its events taking place at night, it celebrates the darkness of the southern winter solstice and features many musical acts, large scale light insta ...
music and arts festivals which showcase large-scale
public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...
and live performances.


History

The precursor to MONA, the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities, was founded in 2001 by Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh. It closed on 20 May 2006 to undergo $75 million renovations. The new museum was officially opened on 21 January 2011, coinciding with the third MOFO festival. The afternoon opening party was attended by 1,350 invited guests. 2,500 members of the public were selected by random ballot for the evening event which included performances by
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True Live True Live is an Australian band formed in Melbourne, Australia. They had chart success with "TV" reaching #76 on the ARIA Single Chart and ''The Shape of It'' reaching #85 on the ARIA Albums Chart. The group received regular play on radio and t ...
,
The Scientists of Modern Music The Scientists of Modern Music were an electronic group from Hobart, Australia, consisting of Cal Young and Simon McIntosh. History In 2004, Cal Young & Simon McIntosh started wagging audio design classes together, in order to jam on a very ...
,
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and The Cruel Sea.


Architecture

The single-storey MONA building appears at street level to be dominated by its surroundings, but its interior possesses a
spiral staircase Stairs are a structure designed to bridge a large vertical distance between lower and higher levels by dividing it into smaller vertical distances. This is achieved as a diagonal series of horizontal platforms called steps which enable passage ...
that leads down to three larger levels of labyrinthine display spaces built into the side of the cliffs around Berriedale peninsula. The decision to build it largely underground was taken, according to Walsh, to preserve the heritage setting of the two
Roy Grounds Sir Roy Burman Grounds (18 December 19052 March 1981) was an Australian architect. His early work included buildings influenced by the Moderne movement of the 1930s, and his later buildings of the 50s and 60s, such as the National Gallery of V ...
houses on the property. Walsh has also said that he wanted a building that "could sneak up on visitors rather than broadcast its presence ... 'a sense of danger' that would enliven the experience of viewing art". Most visitors approach by ferry up the River Derwent. There are no windows and the atmosphere is intentionally ominous. On entering the museum, visitors descend a "seemingly endless flight of stairs", an experience one critic compared with "going down into
Petra Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to t ...
". To see the art, the visitor must work back upwards towards the surface, a trajectory that has been contrasted with the descending spiral that many visitors follow in New York's
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
. Katsalidis's architecture for the museum has been praised as not only fulfilling its function as a showcase for a collection, but also succeeding as it "extends and magnifies into an experience ... there is a sense that the work, the lighting, the space and the materiality have been choreographed with subtlety and skill into a singular if hugely idiosyncratic whole."


Expenses

Operational costs of A$8 million per annum are underpinned by the winery, brewery, restaurant and hotel on the same site. In May 2011, it was announced that the museum would end its policy of free entry and introduce an entry fee to interstate and overseas visitors while remaining free for Tasmanians. MONA also offers an unusual membership program called "Eternity Membership", which not only includes lifetime free admission but notably earns members the right to be cremated and their remains housed in the MONA Cemetery.


Collection

The museum houses over 1,900 artistic works from David Walsh's private collection. Notable works in its inaugural exhibition, ''Monanism'', included Australia's largest modernist artwork,
Sidney Nolan Sir Sidney Robert Nolan (22 April 191728 November 1992) was one of Australia's leading artists of the 20th century. Working in a wide variety of mediums, his oeuvre is among the most diverse and prolific in all of modern art. He is best known ...
's ''Snake'' mural, displayed publicly for the first time in Australia;
Wim Delvoye Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. As the critic Robert Enright wrote in the art magazine ''Border ...
's '' Cloaca Professional'', a machine which replicates the human digestive system and turns food into faeces, excreting it daily; Stephen Shanabrook's ''On the road to heaven the highway to hell'', remains of a
suicide bomber A suicide attack is any violent Strike (attack), attack, usually entailing the attacker detonating an explosive, where the attacker has suicide, accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have oc ...
cast in dark chocolate; and
Chris Ofili Christopher Ofili, (born 10 October 1968) is a British Turner Prize-winning painter who is best known for his paintings incorporating elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists. Since 2005, Ofili has been living and working in Trin ...
's ''
The Holy Virgin Mary ''The Holy Virgin Mary'' is a painting created by Chris Ofili in 1996. It was one of the works included in the ''Sensation'' exhibition in London, Berlin and New York in 1997–2000. The subject of the work, and its execution, caused considera ...
'', a painting created partially with elephant dung. The collection was valued in 2011 at more than $100 million. The curators of MONA are Nicole Durling for Australian contemporary art and Olivier Varenne for international modern and contemporary art. The artworks on display are in non-chronological order and without
museum label A museum label, also referred to as a caption or tombstone, is a label describing an object exhibited in a museum or one introducing a room or area.
s. Instead, visitors are given the option of using free headphones and an
iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...
-like device called the 'O', which has an in-built GPS that senses where its holder is located and displays information about artworks nearby. Users of the O can select different interpretations of any given piece: 'Summary' (a brief description of the work and its artist); 'Art Wank' (curator's notes); 'Gonzo' (Walsh's personal opinions and stories), 'Ideas' (quotes and talking points); and 'Media' (oftentimes interviews with artists). Walsh also commissioned
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, frontman of satirical
Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
band
TISM TISM (an acronym of This Is Serious Mum) are a seven-piece anonymous alternative rock band, formed in Melbourne, Australia on 30 December 1982 by vocalist/drummer Humphrey B. Flaubert, bassist/vocalist Jock Cheese and keyboardist/vocalist Eu ...
, to write and record songs about certain works for the O device. They were released as a free album, '' Vs Art'', with MONA's 2010 book ''Monanisms''.


Reception

Michael Connor of the conservative literary and cultural magazine '' Quadrant'' said that "MONA is the art of the exhausted, of a decaying civilisation. Display lights and taste and stunning effects illuminate moral bankruptcy. What is highlighted melds perfectly with contemporary high fashion, design, architecture, cinema. It is expensive and tense decay." Richard Dorment, art critic for the UK newspaper ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...
'', said that Walsh "doesn't collect famous names; his indifference to fashion is one of the strengths of the collection. He likes art that is fun and grabs your attention, that packs a sting in the tail or a punch in the solar plexus."


Music and arts festivals

Mona hosts the annual outdoor Mona Foma music festival in summer, and its wintertime counterpart,
Dark Mofo Dark Mofo is the winter version of the MONA FOMA festival, also held in Tasmania. With many of its events taking place at night, it celebrates the darkness of the southern winter solstice and features many musical acts, large scale light insta ...
, with extensive public art exhibitions amid a fairground setting of food and drink, live music and entertainment. Past headliners at Mona Foma include
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are an Australian rock music, rock band formed in 1983 by vocalist Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and guitarist-vocalist Blixa Bargeld. The band has featured international personnel throughout its care ...
,
John Cale John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styl ...
,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor Godspeed You! Black Emperor (sometimes abbreviated to GY!BE or Godspeed) is a Canadian post-rock band which originated in Montreal, Quebec in 1994. The group releases recordings through Constellation, an independent record label also located i ...
,
Swans Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Someti ...
,
PJ Harvey Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments. Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined loca ...
and
David Byrne David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...
, while Dark Mofo line-ups have featured musical acts such as
Einstürzende Neubauten (, 'Collapsing New Buildings') is a German experimental music group, formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals; guitar; keyboard) and N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments; perc ...
,
Sunn O))) Sunn O))) (pronounced "sun") is an American experimental metal band formed in 1998 in Seattle, Washington. The band is known for their distinctive visual style and slow, heavy sound, which blends diverse genres including doom metal, drone, bla ...
,
Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...
,
Mogwai Mogwai () are a Scottish post-rock band, formed in 1995 in Glasgow. The band consists of Stuart Braithwaite (guitar, vocals), Barry Burns (guitar, piano, synthesizer, vocals), Dominic Aitchison (bass guitar), and Martin Bulloch (drums). Mogw ...
,
Ulver Ulver (Norwegian for "wolves") is a Norwegian experimental electronica band founded in 1993, by vocalist Kristoffer Rygg. Their early works, such as debut album '' Bergtatt'', were categorised as folklore-influenced black metal, but the band h ...
,
Autechre Autechre () is an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are among the best known acts signed to UK electronic label Warp Records, through which all of Au ...
and
Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by , best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists. The name Merzbow comes from the German dada ...
.


Tourism

In 2012,
Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embarked ...
ranked Hobart as one of the ten must-visit cities in 2013, citing MONA as a major tourist attraction in a small city, similar to the
Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...
in
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.


Ferries


Gallery

File:Dark MOFO 03.jpg,
Ryoji Ikeda Ryoji Ikeda (池田 亮司 ''Ikeda Ryōji'', born 1966) is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noi ...
's sound and light installation ''Spectra'' illuminates the night sky over MONA during every Dark Mofo festival File:Coffin of Iret-Heru-ru MONA Hobart Tasmania.jpg, The sarcophagus of Iret-Heru-Ru, Egypt, c. 600 BCE File:Berriedale TAS 7011, Australia - panoramio (2).jpg,
Wim Delvoye Wim Delvoye (born 1965 in Wervik, West Flanders) is a Belgian neo-conceptual artist known for his inventive and often shocking projects. Much of his work is focused on the body. As the critic Robert Enright wrote in the art magazine ''Border ...
's ''
Cloaca In animal anatomy, a cloaca ( ), plural cloacae ( or ), is the posterior orifice that serves as the only opening for the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts (if present) of many vertebrate animals. All amphibians, reptiles and birds, a ...
'' machine, custom-built for MONA File:PXIII by Berlinde De Bruyckere MONA Hobart.jpg,
Berlinde De Bruyckere Berlinde De Bruyckere (born 1964) is a Belgian contemporary artist. De Bruyckere specializes in sculpture in various media including wax, wood, wool, horse skin and hair, though she also works in watercolour, gouache, and since the early 1990s ma ...
, ''PXIII'' File:The O ipod MONA Tasmania.jpg, The O device File:MONA ROMA departs Port of Hobart.jpg, MONA ROMA ferry departs the
Port of Hobart The Port of Hobart (known also as Hobart Marine Board) is situated on the Derwent River, as the port of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. History The historic part of the port was founded and developed in Sullivans Cove. Docks Constitution Doc ...
for MONA File:MONA vineyard 20171120-070.jpg, One of MONA's vineyards File:Dark MOFO Inverted Crosses.jpg, Inverted crosses on display throughout Hobart during the 2018 Dark MOFO festival File:Untitled white library at mona.JPG, "Untitled" (White Library) by
Wilfredo Prieto Wilfredo Prieto (born 1978; Sancti Spíritus, Cuba), is a Cuban conceptual artist. He moved to Havana to pursue his art studies at Instituto Superior de Arte, The University of Arts of Cuba (ISA), graduating in 2002. Overview He has a universit ...
. It is on the second sub level of MONA


See also

* List of museums in Tasmania


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Official websiteExtract
from ''The Making of MONA'', by Adrian Franklin, Penguin Books Australia
LUX-Mag.com, Art on the Far SidePodcast - Sex and Death Are on Display at the Museum of Old and New Art
{{Authority control Ferry companies of Tasmania Modern art museums
Museum of Old and New Art The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, mode ...
Art museums established in 2011
Museum of Old and New Art The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, mode ...
Museums in Hobart Art museums and galleries in Tasmania
Museum of Old and New Art The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, mode ...