Qualla: Museum of Old and New Art https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Museum of Old and New Art https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art Museum of Old and New Art: Introduction https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art/ Photo credit Wiki ian, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most great museums reach upward toward the light. This one burrows down into the dark. At MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, visitors step off a ferry onto a quiet peninsula north of Hobart, walk into an unassuming building, and then descend a spiral staircase into the cliffs, dropping through three subterranean levels carved out of sandstone. One critic likened the descent to going down into Petra. There are no windows, the atmosphere is deliberately ominous, and the founder, David Walsh, cheerfully calls the whole place a 'subversive adult Disneyland.' It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere, and there is nothing else quite like it on Earth.

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Image: Wiki ian | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/r22s-museum-of-old-and-new-art-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Museum of Old and New Art: The Gambler's Museum https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art/ Photo credit Lynette Woods from Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. MONA exists because of mathematics and nerve. David Walsh, a Hobart local, made a fortune through professional gambling, applying statistical systems to betting, and poured that money into art. He opened a modest precursor, the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities, in 2001, then closed...

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Image: Lynette Woods from Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/r22s-museum-of-old-and-new-art-the-gamblers-museum.mp3 0:06 2 full Museum of Old and New Art: Sex, Death, and a Machine That Digests https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art/ Photo credit Nick-D, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walsh has said his museum circles two themes above all: sex and death. The collection, more than 1,900 works ranging from ancient Egyptian antiquities to confronting contemporary pieces, refuses easy comfort. The centrepiece of its opening was Sidney Nolan's Snake, a vast mural a...

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Image: Nick-D | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/r22s-museum-of-old-and-new-art-sex-death-and-a-machine-that-digests.mp3 0:06 3 full Museum of Old and New Art: The Ladies Lounge https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art/ Photo credit Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0. MONA's appetite for controversy spilled into the courts in 2024. The museum's Ladies Lounge, an exhibition open only to women, was conceived to make men feel the exclusion that women have endured for centuries. A male visitor sued, arguing discrimination, and the legal saga that ...

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Image: Dicklyon | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/r22s-museum-of-old-and-new-art-the-ladies-lounge.mp3 0:06 4 full Museum of Old and New Art: How a Museum Changed a City https://qualla.com/museum-of-old-and-new-art/ Photo credit Azoma, CC BY-SA 3.0. MONA did more than fill a building; it remade Hobart's place in the world. In 2012, Lonely Planet named the city one of its top destinations for the year ahead, citing the museum directly and comparing its pull to the Guggenheim that transformed Bilbao. The museum extends its rea...

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Image: Azoma | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/2/2/s/museum-of-old-and-new-art-wp/r22s-museum-of-old-and-new-art-how-a-museum-changed-a-city.mp3 0:06 5 full