MONA

Had to go to Hobart for that marvellous girly thing, the boob squish.  Anyway, boob squishing turned out fine so I had a bit of time to go and check out MONA.  This is a gallery opened in January this year.  It's all funded by private (allegedly gambling) money and, frankly, it's bloody wonderful.

The stuff ranges from 3,000 year old pots (that are spectacularly beautiful) to stuff produced in the last year or two.

My favourite thing was a spectacularly beautiful installation made of dandelion seeds and a stuffed bird.  Sorry, can't quite work out how to post it and the photo from the gallery isn't quite right.  May not be possible.  I've just checked out her website and nothing really does the work justice.

But all that is a bit of fluff.  The place is incredible.  I wanted to see the rock wall that was left by digging out the space to build the gallery.  It's built into the side of a hill and there's very little to show for it above ground.  Being a bit of a gardening tragic, I was really impressed by the landscaping.  Hey, I've planted some of those things in my own miniscule garden.

The collection is really gob-smacking.  As a former archaeology student, I loved all of the ancient things, and they are really beautiful in their intricacy.  Some of the contemporary stuff is really gorgeous - but that is inadequate to describe it.  I don't think I can do it justice.

One of the really wonderful things about the museum is the way you get information about the artworks.  There are no plaques on the wall describing stuff.  When you enter the gallery, you're given an iPod.   When you are interested in detail about the work, you click buttons on the iPod and info comes up.  I really like that there are no descriptive things on the wall.  It looks much better.  Great for curators.  But it also means that you're not distracted by little plaques.

And then you can save your wander around the museum and they e-mail it to you and let you know which bits you missed!  I got an email with a moving map and all the deets of the things I'd seen, where I'd been and what I'd missed.  ORSUM!