Described by its owner David Walsh as a “subversive adult Disneyland”, MONA is Australia's largest private museum and one of the most controversial private collections of modern art and antiquities in the world. This unique and provocative art collection will leave a lasting impression with visitors as they explore 3 floors of subterranean architecture, art pieces and exhibits.
The 3.5 ha site includes the Source restaurant, a function centre, Moorilla winery and vineyard, a cellar door, wine bar, cinema, Phrontisterion (David Walsh's extraordinary library), and accommodation pavilions as well as Moo Brew, an off site brewery.
Mona also hosts a major music and arts festival each winter, Dark Mofo, which features large-scale public art, live performances and plenty of excellent food and drink at its Winter Feast, the culinary centrepiece of the festival.
Whether you love it or hate it, MONA has, without doubt, put Tasmania on the map. In 2013, Lonely Planet named Hobart as one of its top-10 destinations to visit worldwide, highlighting MONA as a key attraction. International tourism has since boomed and drawn in people from around the world who are attracted to this edgy, cultural phenomenon.
The general collection houses 3200 pieces and counting, and is continually changing and evolving. Be prepared to see celebrated pieces, as well as those that are newly installed. The museum was built to accommodate Sidney Nolan's Snake (1970-72), a giant Rainbow Serpent mural made of 1,620 paintings. Another notable work in its inaugural exhibition is the infamous “poo machine”, Wim Delvoye's Cloaca Professional, a machine which turns food into excrement. As the name indicates, these cutting edge exhibits sit alongside antiquated pieces of old such as Egyptian mummies. Image thanks to Tourism Tasmania & Kim Eijdenberg.
Phrontisterion is David Walsh's dream library—the library he's been imagining since before he built Mona. It houses his large and ever-growing collection of books, rare volumes, maps and manuscripts, with around 50,000 titles covering subjects as diverse as ancient brewing methods, the foods of the pharaohs, Antarctic exploration, science fiction, Greek coinage, casinos, charcuterie, African art, statistics, literature, mathematics, religion, socialism, sex and death. The library also includes a children's collection and excavations through exquisite sandstone.
Image thanks to Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).
Mona is located at 655 Main Road, Berriedale. Although visitors can reach the museum by car in just 15 minutes from Hobart, many opt to head there by a high speed ferry from Hobart's waterfront for a 30-minute ride up the Derwent River right to the steps of the museum.
Image thanks to Tourism Australia & Graham Freeman.
Depending on your taste for the unusual, a visitor could easily spend anywhere from a few hours to multiple days exploring this underground cultural phenomena. Mona is typically open Thursday to Monday from 10AM to 5PM, check their website for up to date opening hours. The Moorilla Museum of Antiquities was the precursor to MONA and founded in 2001. It closed in 2007 to undergo $75 million in renovations. MONA as it is known today was opened on 21 January 2011. 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.Riled with controversy over the years since its inception, owner David Walsh has maintained that its intriguing reputation is good for business. Keeping it fresh and weird has certainly been a key to its success and there is likely to be no shortage of it in the future!
From street level, MONA appears to be a single-story building and there is little indication of the complex wickedness that lies beneath. In fact, most of the museum is actually underground in order to preserve the heritage setting of the two Roy Grounds houses on the property. Construction entailed digging under and around these buildings to keep them intact. Image thanks to Tourism Tasmania & Andrew McIntosh.
On initial inspection, there is not much to see as one enters and it’s easy to feel a strong sense of suspense (this is intended). In order to enter the underground labyrinth, visitors must descend a spiral staircase to begin the exploration, coming back up one level at a time. There are no windows and one can’t help feel that they’re being swept away into Walsh’s fantasyland..
Mona has several bars and eateries including; The Source Restaurant, Faro Bar + Restaurant, Heavy Metal Kitchen, Void Bar, Moorilla Wine Bar and Cellar Door, as well as Manky Sally's which is off-site at the Moo Brew brewery.
In addition to an array of events and a busy exhibitions program, Mona hosts a winter festival each June, Dark Mofo. Mona also has a live-music program, featuring local, interstate and international artists each day the museum is open, find the daily line up on their website.
Enigmatic David Walsh is a professional gambler, art collector and businessman who made his fortune on blackjack and racetrack gambling. Investing hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune to create MONA, Walsh is considered by some a genius who single-handedly put Tasmania on the map. David Walsh married his second wife, American artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, at MONA in March 2014 in a pagan ceremony. His unconventional memoir A Bone of Fact was published in October 2014.
Image Credits:
1 : Kathryn Leahy
2, 3, 17 : Adam Gibson
9, 10 : Jack Mohr Photography
13 : Mona
14 : Tourism Tasmania
