Museum of Old and New Art

MONA: The Museum That Works Specifically Because Its Owner Is Obsessive

MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, sits on the Berriedale Peninsula 12 kilometres north of Hobart on the Derwent River. It opened in January 2011, built by David Walsh, a professional gambler who made a substantial fortune through computer-assisted gambling syndicate systems and spent a significant portion of it on one of the most distinctive private art museums in the world.

The museum is underground. Three floors descend into the sandstone cliff, with natural light reaching only through a central atrium. The collection is approximately 3,000 works spanning Egyptian antiquities, medieval material, contemporary art, and everything Walsh found interesting enough to buy. The guiding principle is not chronological or movement-based; it is Walsh’s specific, idiosyncratic taste, which tends toward work involving death, sex, religion, and the boundaries between them.

How the Museum Works

There are no labels next to the works. Instead, every visitor receives an iPod (they call it the O) loaded with the museum’s navigation and interpretation system. You walk up to a piece, and the O detects your location and presents the relevant content: factual description, Walsh’s own commentary (sometimes combative, sometimes self-deprecating), artist statements, and a voting mechanism where you mark whether you “art” or “anti” each piece.

The commentary is deliberately unusual for a museum. Walsh writes about his own responses to the works, disagrees with critical consensus, and sometimes admits he’s not sure why he bought something. The effect is that visiting MONA is a conversation with a collector who is present through text in a way that curators at other institutions are not.

Notable Works

Cloaca Professional by Wim Delvoye is a machine that replicates the human digestive system at approximately life scale. You feed it a meal of food twice daily and it processes it through the appropriate chemical stages, producing the appropriate output at the end. The process takes approximately 27 hours. The machine is displayed with the output from that day in a sealed case. It runs during museum hours. The piece is either a pointed comment on biological processes or an elaborate provocation, depending on your perspective; MONA is not fussed about which.

Julius Popp’s bit.fall is a waterfall that forms individual letters and words from controlled water jets, generating phrases from real-time internet search data. It is technically impressive and visually compelling in a way that description cannot quite communicate.

Sidney Nolan’s Snake, a wall of 1,620 individual paintings arranged to form a continuous serpent image, occupies an entire room and is one of the largest Australian paintings in existence. The scale changes how you perceive what a painting can be.

The ancient collection – Egyptian mummies, medieval devotional objects, Pacific material – is held to the same standard as the contemporary work. Walsh’s approach treats antiquity and contemporary production as answering the same questions rather than belonging to separate disciplines.

Getting There

MONA runs its own ferry service from Brooke Street Pier in central Hobart. The journey takes 25 minutes and the ferry is a visual experience in itself: a catamaran designed with the same aesthetic as the museum, with a bar and seating that anticipates the museum’s general character. The ferry departs Hobart at 9:30 AM and 11 AM daily; check the current schedule on the MONA website. Return ferries leave the museum hourly from mid-afternoon. A car or taxi from central Hobart takes approximately 20 minutes.

Admission is AUD 30 for adults, free for Tasmanians. The museum is closed on Tuesdays outside of festival periods.

Eating at MONA

The Source restaurant on the museum’s top level is the high-end option, with menus using Tasmanian produce and a wine list that reflects Walsh’s interest in local viticulture. The Tasting Room and the museum’s bar operate at different price points with the same general orientation toward Tasmanian food and wine.

Mona Foma and Dark Mofo

MONA runs two annual festivals that extend the museum’s reach into the city. Mona Foma (FOMA: Festival of Music and Art) in January fills Hobart venues with experimental music, performance, and art. Dark Mofo in mid-June marks the winter solstice with installations, performances, and the Nude Solstice Swim in the Derwent – which is exactly what it sounds like. Both festivals draw audiences from mainland Australia and internationally and require accommodation booking months in advance.

Hobart Beyond the Museum

Salamanca Market runs Saturday mornings at Salamanca Place in the historic sandstone warehouse district near the waterfront – local produce, art, and craft from 8:30 AM to 3 PM. The waterfront precinct has the highest concentration of restaurants in the city; the Fish Frenzy on the pier is reliable and unpretentious.

Mount Wellington (kunanyi) rises 1,271 metres directly behind Hobart and is accessible by road (no public transport) or a 4-5 hour walk from the city. The summit often has snow when the city is mild; the view of Hobart, the Derwent estuary, and the Tasman peninsula is clear on calm days.