Multiple works by Pablo Picasso are now featured on the walls of a women’s bathroom stall at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, Australia, ABC News reported Monday.
The Picasso paintings were originally featured in American artist Kirsha Kaechele’s “Ladies Lounge” installation, which offered an opulent retreat for female guests only, with champagne served by male butlers; the lounge also features some of the museum’s most notable works, by Picasso and such other artists as Sidney Nolan. The installation opened in 2020.
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In April 2023, Jason Lau, a man from New South Wales, was denied entry to the lounge and then lodged a complaint with Tasmania’s civil and administrative tribunal, claiming the museum violated Tasmania’s antidiscrimination act by failing to provide “a fair provision of goods and services in line with the law” to those who paid for museum tickets but do not identify as women. The installation closed shortly after and, in April, a judge ruled that the installation was discriminatory.
The museum was given 28 days to stop refusing entry, but instead found a loophole by lining the walls of a women-only bathroom stall with artworks by Picasso. Prior to this, according to the artist, whose husband David Walsh owns Mona, the museum only had unisex bathrooms.
“We never had female toilets at Mona before, they were all unisex,” Kaechele wrote on Instagram. “But then the Ladies Lounge had to close thanks to a lawsuit brought on by a man and I just didn’t know what to do with all those Picassos.”
“Ladies Lounge” references a moment in Australian history before women won the right to drink in the nation’s pubs in 1965. Until then, women were either relegated to side rooms, where they were charged exorbitantly, or barred from these kinds of establishments altogether.
Picasso is one of the most influential Spanish painters of the 20th century and cofounder of the Cubist movement.
Kaechele is currently trying to get the “Ladies Lounge” reopened via section 26 of the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act, which defines circumstances in which someone may discriminate.
