The hip museum financed by gambling, curated by a Violent Femme

Violent Femme, Brian Ritchie, curates MONA FOMA

We were recently in Tasmania, that one-time convict isle at the end of the earth that changed its name from Van Diemen’s Land in 1852 in an attempt to whitewash away the stain of its dark history.

Today, Tasmania is home to probably the hippest museum in the world, built on the winnings of one of the world’s top gamblers, a working class lad from Hobart called Dave Walsh. (Hobart, Tasmania, incidentally, was also the birthplace of that infamous Hollywood bad boy of the 1930s and 40s, the Australian actor and coke-on-the-end-of-the-penis fiend, Errol Flynn.)

The museum is named Mona, not a salute to the 1957 Bo Diddley classic, covered by the early Rolling Stones, but an acronym for Museum of Old and New Art. It is nearly twice the size of the Guggenheim museum in New York, costs $12 million a year to run and makes only $4 million annually in return, the balance being made up by the gambler Walsh.

Mona initially received international publicity in 2008 when it appointed the bass player of the Milwaukie alternative rock band Violent Femmes, Brian Ritchie, as curator of its annual music festival, MONA FOMA. Ritchie has since had a succession of top acts including John Cale, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Phillip Glass, Grandmaster Flash, PJ Harvey and David Byrne headlining the Mona festivals.

When we were there, Elvis Costello and the Imposters were performing. Sadly, though, Elvis wasn’t featuring his popular spinning wheel which selects, at random, each song to be played next. That, apparently is the show to see.

International visitors flock to the Mona museum in their thousands, making it Tasmania’s top tourist attraction. Because of Mona, the Lonely Planet travel guide listed Hobart as one of world’s top ten cities to visit in 2013.

Mona’s bizarre exhibits range from 151 sculptures of women’s vaginas to the remains of a suicide bomber cast in chocolate. It prides itself in stretching the limits of taste. If ever you’re over in that neck of the woods, Mona is well worth a visit.



In the UK, get your FREE How Blues Evolved preview on link below.
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved+volume+one
 
In the USA, get your free previews on this link. 
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved