I was inundated with talk of the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) when I started a Master of Art Curatorship two years ago. Fellow students raved about the playground-like gallery as a focus of their Tasmanian holidays and academics eagerly shared their antidotes from frequent ‘research’ trips to the innovative museum.

My curiosity was sparked by Australian gambler/art enthusiast David Walsh’s eccentric and sensational experimental institution located in humble Hobart. Over the last few years, I visited – and indulged and judged and re-visited etc- most iconic Australian galleries but after recently finishing my degree, I desperately wanted to make the trip across the water and experience the most distinctive on the Australian market.

On 2018’s sunny Boxing Day, I arrived at the gallery grounds. Vineyards, bars, open grill, lines of tour buses, tennis courts, gift stores, landscape views, larger-than-life-sculptures and crowds dazed me. Twenty minutes passed until I found the gallery’s entrance. Ecstatic and distracted, I had almost forgotten I was visiting an art gallery at all. This interruption at arrival set a precedent: MONA is not about visiting several art exhibitions on your day off or interstate holiday but moreso being submerged by an excessively stimulated destination.

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As instructed, I travelled three levels below ground to Zero to begin my tour (without signposting I thought it was the gallery’s starting point but, as I just discovered on Google, it is actually a curated exhibition). Arriving to MONA’s depths, I was greeted by a forthrightly placed bar screaming how edgy the institution thinks itself. Ignoring it, I commenced down the dark walkway of peaking mystical objects, including taxidermy bats, from behind curtains evocative of Melbourne’s most tacky theatre Dracula’s Cabaret rather than a sophisticated art experience.

Finally, I explored a random and fun sequence of rooms layered with contemporary art (or apparently not so random, considering it was an exhibition). An otherworldly encounter with James Turrell’s Journey led me to Faro, a light-filled bar engulfed by water and mountain views where I let go of my snobby pretentions and enjoyed a very generous serving of sangria. Usually, I skip over gallery pit-stops as they appear as a tired attempt to pinch my pennies but Faro actually felt like a catered, upscale experience to break up the intensity of a large-scale gallery. Cheers to that. Following, I weaved through higher levels containing the same extravagance of Zero’s introduction with the addition of the other half of the museum’s namesake: old art.

And so, MONA pulled me into its underground barrage of art until I tired myself out. Throughout the several hours, all my senses were activated. Disorientating extreme light and darkness, smells of grease and excrement, random tunnels and curtains, live piano and tone-deaf singing made a sensory spectacle. Grotto (2017) by Randy Polumbo was epitomic of my experience of being pulled from everyday life into a disruptive illusion of all sorts – while this example felt a little too much like I was in a 1990’s kids movie.

As I wandered, I was not viewing art as per most leisurely gallery visits but, rather, allowing the experimental presentation of art to distort my feeling of space and time. It would be a task to unpack what I experienced through my five senses, my heart rate and exhilarating confusion (oh, tattooed Tim…) – which I can’t do in this short-ish analysis on the overall visitor experience. So, I will move on…

Yes, MONA was unusual (as I expected). But despite its proclaimed grotesqueness and lack of conservative approach, it’s intention is not to repel but instead play public engagement to perfection. A family friendly place, children bounced around with their parents. ‘A secret door!’ a young family ran into a discrete room past a smartly dressed couple contemplating a less extravagant presentation of Yayoi Kusama. While some areas were exposed with grand points of group gravitation like Yves Klein ‘Pigment bleu sec (Dry Blue Pigment)’ (1957) , nooks and crannies urged me to poke my nose around the place, like hole in the wall 3 Spheres Trames Grid Spheres by Francois Morelette. I was kept inquisitive while everyone around me was exploring and, seemingly, captivated.

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Nonetheless, MONA was not pure entertainment when tact was required. Hiroshima in Tasmania presented a stark change of pace, switching to a serious tone as visitors were welcomed to etch rocks carted from a bombed area, where victims likely died, to feel the texture and connect to the atrocity. I did not do the etching as I was already feeling overwhelmed without trying to touch base with WWII trauma. Yet by merely touching the rocks, my fingers were covered in the charcoal giving them a poetic ashy look. The gallery had hyped me up and slowed me down at its will.

Even the toilets were disruptive. As I walked down a pitch-black hallway near Faro, scanning for ‘the ladies,’ I was met with a dozen glowing ‘all gender’ doorways. Sadly, this is a fantastic display of progressive thinking in a sometimes backward modern Australia.

MONA succeeds with deconstructing ideas of how you experience an art gallery. However, I don’t believe it is subversive – as branded – but rather a smart appeal the modern visitor who wishes – or needs- to consume with excitement and grandeur.

Making my way through MONA was strikingly similar to visiting IKEA: unconventional enough that it felt explorative and random while I knew I was actually being engrossed into a pre-ordained experience.

I don’t reject this approach. MONA grasps, more than any other major art institution in the country, that the contemporary audiences need to feel, touch, taste, smell as well as see at new heights to explore ideas. Through this, MONA frees the majority who aren’t well-behaved intellectuals who like to read wall text and maintain a refrained composure. Side-stepping suffocating art histories and art world personalities, the institution relies on the art’s initial sensory impact and allows it to be enjoyed in that energetic– but still framed – moment.

MONA’s thoughtfully planning public engagement for all might project a façade of mass-entertainment and frivolous fun but it isn’t essentially a shallow experience. If you have pre-existing knowledge, you can enjoy it in context without being pretentious at the expense of your less knowledgeable counterparts. I hate going to a gallery with a friend who didn’t happen to spend years studying art to have them be pushed into an awkward role of non-expert as I ‘get it’ more. These galleries are curated within an intellectual power imbalance which is unengaging and frustrating for visits with your (non-art world) friends.  This scenario doesn’t occur at MONA: everyone can enjoy their visit in their way. As my partner snapped pictures and made sparing comments, I took moments to read the gonzo: challenging and controversial short essays on my provided iPhone guide. Thousands flurried around us at different paces. The awkward pretense of many art galleries was non-existant.

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While I am arguing MONA suits the masses with different points of entry, there is a fair criticism that the institution does not appeal to non-tourists and local residents who don’t fall into a tertiary educated, middle-class background. Jumping on Hobart’s public transport following my MONA visit surely revealed a discrepancy between who visited the gallery and who actually lived in the city.

While on the topic of criticisms, I have several more in terms of curatorial logistics:

  • Firstly, the lack of physical labels in lieu of the iPhone guides made for some awkward moments. While the lack of labels created a freeform experience as I could check my iPhone rather than crowd around wall text and labels, I had no clue what I could and couldn’t touch. I had to rely on eyeing off other people getting told of off for touching a replica of something you could touch. I could almost tell what were the more high profile works of art by the echoes of the gallery attendants repeating, “Don’t touch! Don’t touch! Keep behind the line! No, that thing is fine, this line is not.” A small sign would be a lot less irritating. 
  • Secondly, much of the museum is dimly lit to echo ideas of Egyptian tombs which I not only found cliché but also triggering to my chronic fatigue. I cut my visit short as my body began to shut down without enough lighting. I understand conservation needs but extremely low lighting can be scattered or rotated to help guests not feel like they are falling asleep in a dungeon. Accessibility isn’t just about wheelchair ramps!
  • Thirdly, while contemporary art was curated with energy and zest, the ‘old’ art was a brushstroke term to denote anything pre-1960 and merely used as a boorish and obnoxious decoration rather than substantial or even slightly contextualised curatorial denotation to the much more esteemed ‘new’ art. As if Egyptian artefacts haven’t been exoticised and tokenised by white people enough already.  

MONA is not an art gallery in the sense of a public institution housing art but, rather, a (constructed) Alice-in-Wonderland extravaganza. While it is as pretentious as the next art gallery, it contrasts itself to the traditional system of major Australian art institutions with unashamedly bold energy whisking its visitors away. While it has flaws, such as critical curation and accessibility, MONA has a firm hold on visitor experience. There is a place for most in a multifaceted and engrossing experience. In that, I am sold – few galleries are this engaging, especially for both those well-versed or ignorant in what Walsh calls ‘art wank.’  Putting my few qualms to bed, I am happy to join the hordes of others sparking the curious minds of those not yet having ventured to Tassie, “You have to go to MONA!”  

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