Hobart is home to the very best Modern Art Museum in the world. 

The Museum of Old and New Art simply called MONA described by owner David Walsh as a “subversive adult Disneyland”. 

MONA in Hobart has made fast progression towards being as well recognised as its namesake the Mona Lisa in Paris, without the queues. 

A perfect setting on the Derwent River upriver from Hobart on the road to New Norfolk. A challenging design, euphoric environment, exhibits free from censors and political correctness.

MONA is a museum you will remember and as CNN notes the 'world’s most far out museum".

Privately funded by David Walsh with no hindrance from government and censors.  Walsh has not wasted this chance to use this freedom to challenge us all.  Walsh encourages us to explore the most primitive aspects of our being.

Walsh made millions as one of the most effective gamblers in history by applying a natural gift with numbers to formulate analytical models that allowed Walsh and his colleagues to take advantage of anomalies in betting odds.

“Mathematics,” according to Walsh wisdom “is unsullied and friendships are dirty.” 

Walsh is extreme and MONA could only result from such a thought process.  This randomness and sense of freedom enters his whole being.  At his 50th he served a marshmallow encasing a raspberry compote made from a moulded impression of an ex girlfriend’s vulva.  The two car spaces reserved for Walsh's hedonistically enhanced Mercedes declare they belong to God and God’s Mistress.

Walsh at MONA wants to astonish and that is the thrust that drives the Museum of Old and New Art. And make art accessible to those who may never have entered the academic portals of the world art galleries.  To Walsh a museum that "pisses off the academics".

Walsh defines MONA as the anti-museum allowing his belief in randomness to curate the antiquities and contemporary art with the visitor being the interpreter.

There are no labels or texts.

Gary Tinterow, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, described MONA as “one of the most fascinating and satisfying experiences I have ever had in a museum”. 

John Kaldor, of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, said, “MONA has been a watershed in the way that art is understood by the general public.”

Most visitors ascend to the museum from the Derwent River on the ferry from Hobart.  MONA appearing as a fortress.

Katsalidis's design for MONA magnifies the experience and the play of light and space is well-choreographed. Windows have been left off and an ominous atmosphere created. 

MONA is dominated by its surroundings and very understated. A deliberate decision to build underground has preserved the heritage setting of the two Roy Grounds houses. This low key appearance understates what is inside. A contrast to the iconic externalities of the Sydney Opera House.

Visitors descend into the gallery by a spiral staircase, through sandstone cuttings passing a bar into a twilight hiding a library, a cinema, various performance spaces, and three levels of galleries, all distinct and assorted.  You then work upwards, an opposite to convention.

One gallery is covered with blood-red velvet. Another room is flooded with water that’s dyed black, where you cross on stepping stones to an island on which there are two large and identical cabinets, one containing an Egyptian sarcophagus, the other a digital animation of CAT scans that unveils layers of the sarcophagus until it reveals the bones of its mummy.

MONA confuses.  High-tech to bathroom culture all mixed up and random.

MONA is a theatre. Sculptures of women’s vulvas and cow carcasses amuse? A chocolate coated suicide bomber. Memories of Hiroshima.

Popular is Wim Delvoye’s large, reeking machine that replicates the human digestive system, turning food into faeces, with daily excretions.

MONA for many is beyond acceptable taste. For some a museum for the YouTube generation, for others a new Valley of the Kings, being an underground inverted pyramid.

When leaving the Museum of Modern and Old Art, sex and death dominate our minds and questioning where is the beauty in what we have seen.  Maybe now contrast your time in Hobart and visit some of the world's most beautiful waterfalls at Mt Field and connect with the living world.

At MONA’s centre is the biggest modernist work ever made in Australia, the nearby "Snake", painted by Sidney Nolan. Prompted by the Aboriginal mythology of the Dreaming, the panels connect in the form of a rainbow serpent.

Next to the MONA bar is a cabinet, where you can have your ashes deposited and transformed into an exhibit. Walsh’s father has his ashes in an egg in the cabinet.

There are visual representations of castration, a chocolate cast of the real remains of a suicide bomber a projected photo of a dog copulating with a man. The Locus Focus visualises a MONA toilet.

A Suicide Machine demands you rest and create your personal suicide. Walsh attempted it the day before the opening, and mentioned it was difficult to bring yourself to do it.

Many of the artworks, such as Jenny Saville’s artwork of a naked transvestite, and Chris Ofili’s Virgin Mary smeared in elephant dung, have been banned from other art galleries but not at MONA. And expect more as temporary exhibitions come and go.

MONA includes a micro-brewery, a winery, a restaurant, as well as two bars.

The 'O' devices that navigates you around, adds interactivity.  Choose the amount of information you want and vote as you go.  Submit your email address and your record of what you have seen will be sent. 

Go outside and don't miss the chapel.

The Museum of Old and New Art is open six days a week, closed on Tuesdays. By car around 20 minutes from Hobart and 15 from new Norfolk.  Located at 655 Main Road, Berridale with free car parking. The MONA ferry departs six times a day from the Brooke Street ferry terminal in Hobart.

Allow two hours to view the gallery.