Back in March, we reported that a man had filed a lawsuit against a museum that reserved a room in its exhibition exclusively for women, called the “Ladies Lounge.” The man has since won his case in court, which found that the fact that part of the exhibition was inaccessible to men was discriminatory and ordered the museum to stop refusing entry to “people who do not identify as women.”
But the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Australia, known for its works of art that never fail to spark controversy, was not going to let it go. Kirsha Kaechele, the artist behind the show and wife of the museum’s owner, appealed the court’s decision; she claimed that denying men access to the room in question was part of the art. By creating a women-only salon, she wanted to give men an insight into how women have been discriminated against in Australian history.
Sleight of hand
In the meantime, MONA decided to take an unusual step: it moved part of the exhibition to the women’s toilets. “I thought some of the toilets in the museum needed an update… A bit of cubism in the toilets. So I moved the Picassos,” wrote Kirsha Kaechele in an email shared by a spokesperson. On Monday, she uploaded a video of images of the relocated works:
Kirsha Kaechele notes that the very existence of women’s restrooms is new to the museum: “We’ve never had women’s restrooms at MONA before, they were all unisex. But the Ladies Lounge had to close following a lawsuit filed by a man. And I didn’t know what to do with all these Picassos…”
In an interview published on the MONA website, the artist discusses…
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