Re-branding Tasmania : MONA and the altering of local reputation and identity

This article investigates the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania focussing on the relationship between the residents of a place and their principal tourist attraction. Called the ‘Getty of the Antipodes’, the museum mounts a permanent collection, special exhibitions and music/art festivals intended to shock conventional moral sensibilities. Yet, the conservative people of the community embrace their purposefully provocative attraction for having put them on the world map. This article raises a number of questions. Does creating an attraction and the arrival of tourists change local thought and practice in any fundamental ways? Or is it all a masquerade for the golden horde? Is understanding one’s own locality as an attraction-for-others changing the locals’ perception of where and how they live? And of one another? Ultimately, how sustainable are these new cultural ventures in boosting economies, maintaining new cultural identities and engaging visitor interest in the long term?