On my last trip to Tasmania, I spent a whole day at the MONA museum near Hobart. MONA clearly polarizes and I think it’s part of the concept. Some people are significantly irritated by the content and the way of the presentation. MONA is not like any other museum and especially not like some of the great classic ones like the Louvre in Paris.
If you want to read more about how some people feel about this place have a look at TripAdvisor. MONA was chosen as Travelers Choice 2013 Winner and at the same time was rated by 135 people as either a poor or even terrible experience. You really have to be open-minded about some of the content. And it’s definitely a wild place and fits therefore perfectly on my website.
For me, MONA is clearly one of the most enjoyable museums in the world. The location, architecture, presentation, and variety of content is really great. On the museum ground, there are some nice restaurants and cafés with very tasty food. On some days there is live music on an open-air stage.
The main part of the museum is located subterraneous. The architecture is very stylish with a slightly dark mood.
The only thing that I didn’t like was that all the information about the content was accessible only via an iPad which was provided by the museum for the time of the visit. Maybe I’m just too old for this but I found having to look at an iPad all the time distracted me from the exposition.
The diversity of the subjects was really astonishing and overwhelming. You could join a Japanese tea ceremony in a room full of mirrors, watch a wind-driven automatic drawing machine, and wonder about hundreds of dead flies hanging on invisible fishing lines.
Even a horror chamber was part of the exhibition.
One room was full of TV screens showing dozens of interviews with different people at the same time.
There were also some old historic sculptures from Asia which gave a great contrast to some postmodern sci-fi-like objects.
One of the highlights and probably a very controversial one was a poo machine that was able to generate human poo from food. An artificial digestive system looking like it’s coming directly out of a sci-fi movie.
If you want to know more about MONA have a look at their website.
A short notice regarding the images in this blog post. In addition to my copyright for all images on this site, images shot within the MONA building underly some additional copyright restrictions. I got permission from MONA to use my images for editorial non-commercial purposes on my personal website. But any further usage of these images (including direct links to these images) is not allowed without further written permission both from MONA and me.
Update 2020
In 2019 I’ve re-visited MONA twice, in January and in August. Some of my favorite objects from the last visit didn’t exist anymore, but some great new ones were added (like a room with a huge basin of dark oil). It’s still my favorite museum in the world. Here are some new images:
Wild Places 
Wow!!! This place looks amazing…nice images, really seem to capture the vibe of the place.