Museum of Old and New Art

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is a privately funded art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Established by Tasmanian professional gambler and collector David Walsh, it is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. Officially opened on 21 January 2011, MONA houses ancient, modern, and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection. The institution is noted for its central themes of sex and death, a framework Walsh has used to describe the museum as a subversive adult Disneyland. Beyond its permanent and frequently updated indoor displays, the museum hosts the annual Mona Foma and Dark Mofo music and arts festivals, which feature large-scale public art and live performances.

The precursor to MONA was the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities, founded by David Walsh in 2001. This earlier institution closed in 2006 or 2007 to undergo a seventy-five million dollar renovation. Walsh, who amassed his fortune developing gambling systems, funded the new museum entirely himself, investing over two hundred million dollars into the project. The new museum was officially opened on 21 January 2011, coinciding with the third Mona Foma festival. The opening festivities included an afternoon event for 1,350 invited guests, followed by an evening event for 2,500 members of the public selected by random ballot, which featured performances by artists including Wire, Health, and The Cruel Sea. In May 2011, the museum ended its initial policy of free entry, introducing admission fees for interstate and overseas visitors while remaining free for Tasmanians and youth. Operational costs of eight million Australian dollars per annum are underpinned by the winery, brewery, restaurant, and hotel on the site.

The museum presents works from the David Walsh private collection, which comprises around five thousand works ranging from ancient Egyptian antiquities and prehistoric artefacts to modern and contemporary art. The curators are Nicole Durling for Australian contemporary art and Olivier Varenne for international modern and contemporary art. The collection is diverse in its art historical coverage, with no particular framework or categorisation, instead embracing a simple juxtaposition of the old and the new. Artworks on display are presented in a non-chronological order and without traditional museum labels. Visitors navigate the space and access information using a mobile application called The O, which uses sensors to locate the user and provide details about nearby works. The O offers multiple interpretations for each piece, including summaries, curator notes, Walsh's personal opinions, quotes, and media interviews. The museum also features a large, wide-ranging library.

Notable works in the museum's inaugural exhibition, Monanism, included Sidney Nolan's Snake mural, which comprises nearly two thousand individual paintings and was displayed publicly for the first time in Australia. Other signature pieces include Wim Delvoye's Cloaca Professional, a machine that replicates the human digestive system to turn food into faeces on a daily schedule, and Stephen Shanabrook's On the road to heaven the highway to hell, which consists of the remains of a suicide bomber cast in dark chocolate. Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting created partially with elephant dung, was also part of the inaugural exhibition until it was deaccessioned and sold in 2015. The collection also features works by artists such as Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Fernando Botero, and Berlinde De Bruyckere, and includes specific installations like James Turrell's Unseen Seen, Richard Wilson's 20:50, and Alfredo Jaar's The Divine Comedy.

Designed by Fender Katsalidis Architects and built by Hansen Yuncken, the single-storey MONA building appears at street level to be dominated by its surroundings, but its interior features a spiral staircase leading down to three larger levels of labyrinthine display spaces carved into the Triassic sandstone cliffs of the Berriedale peninsula. The decision to build largely underground was taken to preserve the heritage setting of two Roy Grounds houses on the property, the 1957 Courtyard House and the 1958 Round House, which now contain the entrance facilities and library respectively. Walsh wanted a building that would sneak up on visitors rather than broadcast its presence, creating a sense of danger to enliven the experience of viewing art. The windowless, dimly lit subterranean spaces feature raw excavated sandstone walls, concrete bridges, and Corten steel walkways, creating an intentionally ominous atmosphere. Visitors descend a seemingly endless flight of stairs into the galleries and must work their way back upwards towards the surface, a trajectory contrasted with the descending spiral of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A 2017 extension named Pharos cantilevers over the River Derwent and is accessible via a tunnel from the main gallery. A second tunnel, the Siloam, opened in 2019 to connect MONA and Pharos.

MONA is located on the Moorilla Estate in Hobart, Tasmania. Most visitors approach by ferry up the River Derwent, a forty-minute journey from Brooke Street Pier. Upon arrival, visitors ascend a long staircase cut into the rock, passing a tennis court and a warped mirrored wall before entering the museum through the Roy Grounds house. The museum is mostly accessible for mobility aids, with lifts operating between the subterranean floors, though certain areas like the Pausiris chamber and parts of the Round House are not accessible. The museum advises that the environment can be dark, noisy, and sometimes smelly, with strobe lighting operating in some areas and confined spaces forming part of the visitor experience. A visit typically takes three to four hours, though two-day tickets are available. The estate also features a winery, brewery, restaurant, and accommodation pavilions.