MONA Ladies Lounge
In Australia there is an extremely ironic and interesting case happening as of the writing of this article (April 2024) where a man is suing an artist for gender discrimination over an art piece drawing attention to, you guessed it, gender discrimination.
Kirsha Kaechele
First, let’s talk about the piece of art in question and the artist behind this work. Kirsha Kaechele, the artist behind the piece, was born in 1976 in California and grew up moving around the world to places like Japan and Guam with her family.
In 1994 she started an informal education program for herself where she traveled to more than 50 countries in 7 years, meeting with important and influential people from all different disciplines with the idea that life designs itself. As she progressed through this education, and following that a few years studying at the University of California Santa Cruz, she became more and more interested in the performance art world. In 2010 after an already successful career, she moved to Tasmania, Australia to join David Walsh (her now-husband) at MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) as a curator and artist.
One of the most established examples of her work is The Embassy. Located in New Orleans in 2015 she staged a gun buyback during the biennale. This was promoted on billboards all around town and was picked up by local rappers and singers as well. The installation also included a recording studio where youth could come to record tracks with these famous artists for free. It was originally intended to run for three months but because of its huge popularity it became a permanent fixture and Kaechele expanded it to include schools for other young people like beauty school, fashion school, and a culinary arts school.
Another example of her work, this time at MONA, was entitled Eat the Problem. Aiming to draw attention to invasive species in Australia there was a visual exhibit but also a cookbook released with ways people could cook and eat animals such as cats and others that were not native to the area. For the final cherry on the cake, she held feasts at the museum where these recipes were served (unsure whether or not it was actual cat on the menu but I’m guessing not).
So, hopefully you can get a good sense now of Kaechele’s career, her sensibilities, and her love of performance art!
Ladies Lounge
Now let’s move onto the artwork at the center of this controversy. It’s called Ladies Lounge and it’s an installation at MONA that opened in 2020 (and is still ongoing). This artwork is a blocked off area of the gallery, where Kaechele has created a lovely calm atmosphere and has filled the space with famous and important artwork from MONA’s collection (think Picassos and Sidney Nolans). The kicker is that only women are able to enter, this includes everyone who identifies as a woman. The only men who are allowed to be in the space are the male butlers waiting on the women inside.
Kaechele drew inspiration for this work from many places but one was her great-grandmother, a socialite, who was known for throwing elaborate female only parties with amazing food, expensive wine, and male butlers. Another source of inspiration was the fact that women in Australia didn’t earn the right to drink in pubs with men until 1965, before then they were relegated to dingy side rooms (called ladies lounges) and charged insanely high prices for everything. About Ladies Lounge Kaechele says it’s an “essential space for perspective and reset from this strange and disjointed world of male domination” (Turnbull, 2024).
So, this artwork by itself is interesting and definitely makes you think about classically male spaces that used to, and still do, exist in the world. But this in itself is obviously not a crime. At least not to a regular person.
The Lawsuit
In April 2023 a man named Jason Lau visited MONA and of course was not allowed to enter the installation. Instead of thinking this was interesting or just wishing he could go in and appreciate the art but ultimately move on with his day, Lau lodged a complaint with Tasmania’s Anti Discrimination Commissioner saying that he was turned away from the exhibit, and therefore discriminated against, based on his gender identity.
On March 19, 2024 the matter was heard in the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Hobart, Australia. Kaechele arrived at the courthouse with 25 other women all wearing coordinating navy suits and business attire, they also performed subtly coordinated movements like crossing their legs in unison as part of an extended piece of performance art. Kaechele said “it was a dream come true for the work to leave the museum and enter the realm of the world – a completely new space. It was very interesting to have artwork come to life in a courtroom” (Burke, 2024).
For his part, Lau argued that he paid money to enter the museum and he wasn’t expecting to not be allowed to view one of the exhibits. Kaechele sided with him in her testimony. She said “I side with Mr Lau and acknowledge that his description of loss is indeed substantial” (Blackwood, 2024). However, she went on to say that the artwork was necessarily discriminatory and that by denying men access to the lounge they are still getting to participate just in a different way. She also said that this exhibit cannot really be compared to male-only spaces that still exist in Australia because, “those clubs exist to connect important men to one another and reinforce patriarchal power structures. In our lounge, we’re just drinking champagne and sitting on the sofa. I don’t think it’s much of a parallel. It’s meant to illuminate the past and be lighthearted, and we can only do that because we’re women and we’re lacking power” (Frost, 2024).
At the end of the day, Lau asked for a formal apology and for men to be let into the exhibit or for men to be able to pay a discounted ticket price to make up for the loss of not being able to participate in the work. MONA and Kaechele said no to both options. Kaechele said, “I’m not sorry, and you can’t come in. This case asks the tribunal to appreciate that art may, in fact, promote equal opportunity in a different way, in a way that’s more at a conceptual level“ (Frost, 2024).
The one-day hearing concluded with Kaechele and her entourage dancing out of the courtroom to Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible”. The decision will be handed down from the commission at a later date but MONA and Kaechele have said they will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if the decision is not in their favour.
Update: After writing this article a decision was handed down by the tribunal. They ruled that MONA is directly discriminating against anyone who doesn’t identify as a woman and that they must start allowing everyone access to the Ladies Lounge exhibit. A spokesperson from MONA said that the result was deeply disappointing and that they are prepared to take the case to the Supreme Court (which they have said before and is written above). Ultimately, they said, the museum would rather close the exhibit than let men in.
Works Cited
Blackwood, Fiona. “MONA Defends Ladies-Only Lounge Against Anti-Discrimination Case Brought by Male Visitor”. ABC News Australia. 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/mona-ladies-lounge-legal-fight-men-excluded/103605236
Burke, Kelly. “Artist Behind MONA’s Ladies-Only Lounge “Absolutely Delighted” Man in Suing for Gender Discrimination”. The Guardian. 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/mar/20/artist-behind-monas-ladies-only-lounge-absolutely-delighted-man-is-suing-for-gender-discrimination
Frost, Natasha. “A Museum’s Feminist Artwork Excluded Men. So One Man Took it to Court”. The New York Times. 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/world/australia/mona-ladies-lounge-tasmania.html
Turnbull, Tiffany. “MONA: Australian Art Museum Sued over Women’s Only Exhibit”. BBC News. 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-68572280