A colleague who sits next to me is a Tasmanian. He has in the past year, mentioned the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania and said it’s a wonderful place to visit. My boss echoed this sentiment so MONA in Hobart Tasmania has etched in my mind as a place to visit, for many months now.
Recently however, I decided to find out more – about this museum as well as its founder David Walsh, who amassed fortunes through gambling.
My discovery has in some ways, further cemented my thoughts in recent months about how in some areas, my colleagues and I are poles apart in our thinking.
Several months ago my boss was away on a weekend to Dunkeld at the tip of the Grampians, for a wedding. He alluded to the setup which sounded very nice. On the Monday after we were chatting about weekends and it turned out that wedding was between two men. I must have expressed a startled look and for a few seconds, I was wondering how I should react – ie normally as though that was the least surprising event and is to be treated as any other wedding on any given weekend, or surprise at how common and accepted this sort of thing has become.
Speaking of which – on Saturday Tress and I were at the airport to pick up an ex-colleague who is visiting to watch the Australian Open tennis and while waiting, a car next to me pulled up and two men were kissing each other as one of them was being dropped off at work in one of the hospitality establishments.
I am witnessing more and more of such displays which tend to say to the community that same sex couples are as normal and common as a dark haired Asian.
My surprise and startled state at discovering a wedding over the weekend was between two men, has surely put me in a “weird” category – that, and my views on MONA – that (apparently) venerable museum in Hobart. I may be prejudiced and it may be a wonderful place. But based on some simple google based clicks and reads, I am inclined to just cross that off my list as a must-visit. In as much as it can be claimed that it is a home for “old and new art” to be exhibited, it has come across as a monument to shock and challenge the old world where one was less ready to discard God and His ways.
I understand some may say it is discarding old world prejudices in some ways, as opposed to discarding God. Celebrating sex and death in the manner MONA appears to do however, tends to suggest it is not just old world prejudices that is being challenged. After all David Walsh is also a vocal atheist. One would not be so easily accused of unfairly seeing this as discarding God and His ways. Knowledge of good and evil – as Eve did in Eden – in the sense of being able to decide what is right and wrong and not let God do that, appears to be what this is mainly about. So is same sex marriage, I think.
Ante 