Engaging with the anti-museum? Visitors to the Museum of Old and New Art

Abstract

Hailed as the most important cultural event since the opening of the Sydney Opera House, the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania seemingly made very substantial changes to visitor experiences of an art gallery, catalysed a significant cultural florescence in Hobart and achieved tourism-led urban and regional regeneration on a par with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Drawing on a large survey of visitors this article illuminates the origins, social aims and impacts of successful attempts to push art museums beyond what Hanquinet and Savage call ‘educative leisure’. It contributes to our knowledge of the processes by which traditional forms of ‘highbrow’ cultural experience associated with the dominance of the classical and historical canon are being eclipsed by newer, performative, emotional and sensual forms of cultural taste.