Tasmanian Mona to challenge decision to allow men into women-only art salon | australian news

The Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) will appeal an anti-discrimination decision that ordered the museum to allow men into its women-only Ladies Lounge.

Moorilla Estate Pty Ltd, On March 19, the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Court ordered the company owned by Mona founder and owner David Walsh to “stop denying entry to the exhibition known as the Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art to people who do not identify as ladies.

On Tuesday, Ladies Lounge artist Kirsha Kaechele announced Mona would challenge the decision in Tasmania’s supreme court.

“I think the argument is worth making, not just for the Ladies Lounge, but for the sake of art and the law,” Kaechele said in a statement.

“We need to challenge the law to consider a broader reading of its definitions as they apply to art and the impact it has on the world, as well as the right of conceptual art to make some people (men) uncomfortable.”

The case made international headlines in March after Sydney’s Jason Lau, who has kept a low public profile throughout the saga, lodged a complaint with the court arguing that his denial of entry to the Ladies Lounge when he visited the museum on April 1, 2023 was gender discrimination.

The opulently furnished women-only space, in which male butlers serve champagne to people who identify as ladies, houses some of the museum’s most important works, including Sidney Nolan, Pablo Picasso and a trove of antiquities from Mesopotamia, Central America and Africa. .

Kaechele led the court with an entourage of 25 women, all dressed in navy blue business suits, who performed discreet, synchronized choreographed movements throughout the day of the hearing.

Mona’s defense included the claim that the Ladies Lounge did include men, because their feelings of exclusion were in fact part of the artistic effect of the installation.

When the proceedings concluded, the girl group left the courthouse to the Robert Palmer song Simply Irresistible.

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Mona’s statement on Tuesday said the appeal was brought on the basis that the court took too narrow a view in terms of women’s historical and current social disadvantage.

The court failed to recognize how the Ladies Lounge experience could promote equal opportunity, the statement said, through its exploration of the lived experience of women who have been banned from entering certain spaces throughout history.

“Given what (women) have been through over the past millennia…we deserve equal rights and reparations, in the form of unequal rights or chivalry, for at least 300 years,” Kaechele said.

The court gave Mona a 28-day operational period to stop denying entry to men, which expired on Monday. The Ladies Lounge is now closed to the public.