Museum of Old and New Art

My brother lives in Tasmania, the island state south of the Australian mainland, which juts into the Southern Ocean and is the last dry land between there and Antarctica. Remote, rugged and sparsely populated, Tasmania is mostly visited for its gorgeous coastlines and forested ranges, with a barbaric history as the maximum security wing of Britain’s Antipodean prison colony thrown in. But for most of the world, Tassie still counts largely as undiscovered territory. Indeed, Australians from other parts of the country still tend to conjure out-of-date stereotypes involving sheep farming, rapacious logging, inbreeding and stifling conservatism. This is a pity, because the island’s breathtaking scenery, cool climate, and pristine waters mean that anyone whose idea of a good time involves trundling around beautiful countryside stuffing himself with oysters, artisan cheese, and sauvignon blanc is missing a very good time indeed. Exhibiting all the usual stereotypes, three generations of my family made a trip to Tasmania for a family reunion this past September. There we found all the oysters, cheese, and good wine we had been primed to expect. What we didn’t expect, though, was a transformative visual art experience. I’m not sure I can describe it, but here goes nothing.

North of Hobart, perched on a peninsula rising out of the Derwent River, stands the most astonishing art museum in the world. The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is a two hundred million dollar private art museum—the fever dream of a wildly eccentric professional gambler named David Walsh. Described by Walsh as a “subversive adult Disneyland” and in a 2013 New Yorker profile as “a museum dedicated to sex and death,” MONA is a fortress-like edifice that towers over the river, which you approach on a bizarre, camouflaged ferry. Once you arrive, you can bounce on a massive adult-sized trampoline and smirk at your distorted reflection in the mirrored exterior of the entrance hall before descending via glass elevator four stories into a dimly lit labyrinth of caverns carved hundreds of feet into the sandstone below. This is where the real fun begins. Within its vast chambers, glowing in crepuscular semi-darkness, are arrayed almost two thousand challenging, disturbing, viscerally moving pieces of art that explore our collective fascination with—and fear of—sex and oblivion. Within collections with names like “Futility,” “Annoys Our Female Curators,” and “Stuff David Bought When He Was Drunk,” pieces range from deconstructed Egyptian sarcophagi, to violent action movie scenes crocheted out of glittering videotape, to a statue depicting the remains of a suicide bomber crafted out of chocolate, to a car-sized sculpture of a human head inset with portholes through which you can peer to observe the whirling, strobe-lit internal workings of the human subconscious. There is also a really good bar.

Pieces are alternately disorienting, shocking, funny, and sublimely beautiful. If it sounds appalling I’m not articulating how liberating it felt to freely, frankly, and with curiosity scrutinize topics that are generally considered taboo. Whatever I had expected from Tasmania, it did not include standing with my septuagenarian mother in front of 151 porcelain sculptures of female genitalia and having a really interesting discussion about society’s treatment of female sexuality. In that surreal context, it’s possible that for the first time in our lives, we were actually treating one other not as mother and son but as equals. 

Once you arrive, you can bounce on a massive adult-sized trampoline and smirk at your distorted reflection in the mirrored exterior of the entrance hall before descending via glass elevator four stories into a dimly lit labyrinth of caverns carved hundreds of feet into the sandstone below. 

This is what art is supposed to do. The work at MONA is not universally beautiful or in “good” taste. It’s irreverent, macabre, profane, and frequently disturbing. But despite this, maybe because of this, it holds real power to challenge our assumptions and maybe make us talk to our parents and our kids differently. Oh, and in the five years since it opened, the MONA has become the most popular tourist attraction in Tasmania, singlehandedly transformed the Tasmanian tourist economy and placing the city on the international art map. Tasmanians once looked askance at their mad genius millionaire gambler, but it turns out they didn’t know how lucky they were. 

In 2017, plans are afoot to establish a bold new visual arts event in Baton Rouge, with the goal of presenting art installations in ways the city has never seen before. Could such an event move us to talk differently about hard subjects like sex, death, racism? The MONA experiment proves it’s possible. For the sake of the community, the economy, and progress in general, let’s hope it doesn’t pull its punches. Stay tuned.