{"id":775,"date":"2014-03-16T05:16:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T05:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/callibeth.com\/blog\/?p=775"},"modified":"2014-03-16T05:16:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T05:16:01","slug":"at-the-mona-in-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/callibeth.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/16\/at-the-mona-in-tasmania\/","title":{"rendered":"At the MONA in Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a recent trip to Australia, I visited the best ever<\/strong> museum: the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA<\/a>), up the river from Hobart, Tasmania. What a ride! And I’m not talking about the ferry we took from Hobart’s Sullivan Cove to the MONA \u2014 although that was a great way to start the journey.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of photos of one of my favorite installations, entitled “”.<\/p>\n

\"Untitled<\/a>
Untitled installation at the MONA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"A<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
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A closer look at the untitled installation<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

I was aware of so many simultaneous reactions to this room full of blank white books — undergoing a kind of vertigo of meaning while critiquing a loose headband; contemplating the horror of a zombie library while wondering at the artist’s control in not making a mark in\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0of the books or shelves or tables; imagining the impact of one red dot while wondering at the impulse to find meaning even in this blank room;\u00a0acknowledging the urge to make a mark\u00a0somewhere<\/em>\u00a0while mulling over various criticisms of the blank book made within the artist book community; remembering a cartoon from my childhood in which all the musical notes came loose from the staves and fell off the page; thinking about invisible ink, the perils of magnetic media …<\/p>\n

And that was just one work of art on the three subterranean floors of the MONA. We stayed all afternoon and didn’t see everything \u2014\u00a0not even close.<\/p>\n

Here were some of the highlights for me:<\/p>\n