Paintings by Picasso on beautiful “display”… in bath of women. The reason? The museum moved the works of the famous Spanish painter to such an unusual location after a visitor (male) complained that he could not see two drawings and a painting as part of the installation “Ladies Lounge” by the artist and curator Kirsha Kaecheleopen “to all women”, at MONA in Tasmania (Australia).
The “Ladies Lounge” is described on the museum’s website as «a tremendously luxurious space where women can indulge in decadent appetizers, imaginative drinks and other ladylike pleasures, welcomed and entertained by the fabulous butler». When the court ruling prohibited MONA from refusing the entrance to “people who do not identify as ladies”, the paintings were moved to the “ladies” bathroom.
The charge of discrimination
The Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled that the “Ladies Lounge” installation breached Australia’s Anti-Discrimination Act 1998 and that the museum could no longer refuse entry to people who do not identify as female. Artist Kirsha Kaechele noted that denying men entry into the room was part of the point of the exhibition, namely to let them experience a very small part of the discrimination faced by women in history.
To circumvent the ruling, the works are now hanging inside the women’s restrooms, a specially renovated room that includes a fully functional toilet, called the “Ladies Room.” “While the Ladies Lounge is undergoing a series of changes to meet the exemptions required for reopening, I’ve been doing a bit of remodeling,” Kirsha says. “I thought some of the restrooms in the museum could use an update. A little cubism in the cubicles.”
In the post published on her social media accounts, the artist and curator says: «We have never had bathrooms for women at MONA before, they were all unisex. But then the Ladies Lounge had to close due to a lawsuit brought by a man and I really didn’t know what to do with all those Picassos…”. Kirsha Kaechele said she would appeal the ruling and offered several options for reviving the “Ladies Lounge” concept, as CNN reports.
Among these ideas is the possibility of finding and exploiting a number of loopholes in the part of the anti-discrimination law where there is a list of “exceptions” in which gender discrimination is permitted.
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