Explaining MONA to my Grandmother Clea Sanders knows there are no small parts, only small actors.
Like most grandparents, my Nan is enthralled by even the most banal details of my holidays. For some strange reason, she gets a vicarious thrill from hearing about every delayed flight, severely oversold landmark, and woeful hotel breakfast. Unlike most grandparents, however, my Nan is an art gallery guide, and so expects a detailed, considered play-by-play of every gallery I visit. She was particularly excited to hear about my trip to Tasmania’s (in)famous Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), which is notorious for boundarypushing artworks such as a wall of ceramic vulvas. The following is my attempt to process this arresting, unorthodox wonderland in a way that is both septuagenarian-friendly and unlikely to result in recurring nightmares about tattooed pig skins (don’t ask): • On the plus side, there are no plaques in this museum, so you won’t have to wear your reading glasses. Unfortunately, all the information about the artworks is on an app that I don’t think is available on the Nokia 3310. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. • The ‘old’ bit of the name just means ‘we managed to get our hands on a few stolen 52
African artefacts that the British Museum didn’t want’. The ‘new’ bit means ‘your fiveyear-old probably could have made this art, but you’d definitely send them to therapy if they did’. • A strange amount of the museum is centred around the bloke who owns it – we’re talking hats, mugs, inside jokes on the audio guide that I’m sure everyone is just pretending to understand, the whole shebang. It’s kind of cult-ish, but in such a deliberate way that it cancels out any cool, harrowing vibes. Also, we saw him in the courtyard and he walks weirdly. He likes to bet on greyhound races and is apparently very good at maths, so Grandpa would probably get on well with him. • It can be hard to tell what’s art and what isn’t. The ping pong table is fair game for any visitor with an ounce of hand-eye coordination (so, anyone but me), but the nearly identically decorated pinball machine next to it is not to be touched, lest its artistic sanctity be corrupted. The man screaming into a microphone in the basement: art. The man doing abdominal crunches while talking loudly into his AirPods: not art, but certainly one of the most profoundly affecting things I saw all day.
Who do you have to //// to get a high QS World University Ranking round here?
