Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

In Tasmania (and Everywhere Else), Art is a Tourist Magnet

June 10, 2013 by Marion Maneker

 

David Walsh
David Walsh

The Telegraph has a profile of David Walsh, the mathematically gifted gambler, and his Tasmanian Museum of New and Old Art (Mona) which has proven the phenomenal power that art has to attract tourists in the 21st Century:

Walsh calls Mona a secular temple and a subversive adult Disneyland. If some of his early ideas for exhibits – a crematorium and an abattoir that were viewable – remain unrealised, Mona still goes somewhere beyond the frontiers of taste into the badlands of emotion. It has been derided as a museum for the YouTube generation, an underground inverted pyramid, an egoseum, the future, the past, an un-museum and – hurtfully for Walsh, one feels – conventional. Mostly, people have loved it.

Designed like a Borgesian labyrinth, lit like a nightclub, Mona, since it opened on a remote island with a population of 500,000, has attracted more than 700,000 people. Visitors came first from Tasmania, then from Australia and now, increasingly, from the world – a growing caravan of celebrities, art lovers, aficionados, camp followers and the curious. In less than two years, Mona has become Tasmania’s foremost tourist attraction and a significant driver of its languishing economy. Lonely Planet listed Hobart as one of the world’s top 10 cities to visit in 2013, largely because of Mona.

Mona: the shock-art museum that put Tasmania on the cultural map (Telegraph)

More from Art Market Monitor

  • Pace Commits to Silicon Valley with Palo Alto GalleryPace Commits to Silicon Valley with Palo Alto Gallery
  • Top Auction Prices v. Baseball Contracts: An Illuminating ComparisonTop Auction Prices v. Baseball Contracts: An Illuminating Comparison
  • No ReserveNo Reserve
  • Could a Grand Bargain Save Detroit’s Art from the Auction Block? Let’s Hope SoCould a Grand Bargain Save Detroit’s Art from the Auction Block? Let’s Hope So
  • Richard HamiltonRichard Hamilton
  • Ai Weiwei Lights Up HirshhornAi Weiwei Lights Up Hirshhorn

Filed Under: Collectors

About Marion Maneker

LiveArt

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor
 

Loading Comments...