A man is suing the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) alleging gender discrimination after being denied entry to a women-only art installation. New South Wales resident Jason Lau lodged a complaint with the Australian State Anti-Discrimination Commissioner after visiting the contemporary art museum last April, claiming that MONA’s “Ladies Lounge” facility contravenes Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1998.
Created “for any woman”, the participatory experience “Ladies Lounge” by artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele It deliberately excludes male visitors as a commentary on the country’s exclusion of women from specific spaces. Before 1965, Australian women were banned from drinking in public bars, instead relegated to small so-called ladies’ lounges (if they were allowed), which usually charged exorbitant prices for drinks. Today there are still private “men’s clubs” around the country, such as the Melbourne Club and the Australian Club in Sydney, which only allow men.
The museum, and Kaechel itself, have their own complicated histories. Founded in 2011, MONA is an underground museum in Hobart, the capital of the island state of Tasmania, which displays the art collection of professional gamer and businessman David Walsh. Kaechele, Walsh’s spouse, made headlines in 2005 in New Orleans’ low-income St. Because he bought five dilapidated houses in the Roch neighborhood to organize his elaborate and exclusive art shows. He faced criticism for aiding the gentrification of the area and allowing properties to fall into disrepair after leaving the country for Tasmania while still owing thousands in property taxes and building code citations.
First unveiled at MONA in December 2020, Kaechele’s “Ladies Lounge” features luxurious furnishings and green silk curtains and offers female visitors access to a collection of antiquities and modernist works by Sidney Nolan and Pablo Picasso. Inspired by the artist’s great-grandmother’s lavish ladies-only “parties” in Basel and Beverly Hills, the only men in attendance are butlers, who serve champagne to guests as they browse some of the museum’s most prized works of art.
But in his lawsuit, Lau says banning men from the interactive experience is discriminatory.
“I visited Mona, I paid $35 (AUD), I expected to have access to the museum, and I was quite surprised when I was told that I would not be able to see an exhibition, “Ladies Lounge,” Lau told the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in court last week. Sydney Morning Herald. Lau could not be reached for comment.
In response, Kaechel and MONA argued that the facility is designed to give women equal opportunities and serves as an “opportunity to gather peacefully as women without men.”
“I’ve taken something that was used to keep women and turned it into a triumphant space for women that excludes men,” Kaechel said at the hearing, ending her statement by reading “The Advantages of Being a Being” from Guerrilla Girls. Woman artist” (1988).
Although Lao’s complaint is not the first against the museum – another man accused MONA of discrimination in August 2023 before dropping the case after speaking with Kaechele – the court’s decision could determine the future of the “Ladies Lounge” installation.
“The Ladies Lounge is an essential space for perspective and reset from this strange, disconnected world of male dominance,” Kaechel said. Hyperallergic. “There should be more.”
