A museum in Australia has moved Picasso artworks to a women’s restroom, skirting a discrimination complaint by a male visitor who couldn’t enter an exhibit where the works were previously hung.
Two paintings and a drawing by Pablo Picasso were originally featured in American artist and museum curator Kirsha Kaechele’s “Ladies Lounge” installation at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) – which opened in December 2020 – “to any and all ladies.”
The experiential artwork was billed by the museum as a “tremendously lavish space” where women can indulge in “decadent nibbles, fancy tipples, and other ladylike pleasures” served by a male butler while they peruse art in a green velvet-draped room.
But MONA was ordered to stop refusing entry to “persons who do not identify as ladies” after the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled in April that the show violated Australia’s 1998 Anti-Discrimination Act.