<P> The museum houses over 400 artistic works from David Walsh's private collection . Notable works in its inaugural exhibition, Monanism, include Sidney Nolan's Snake, displayed publicly for the first time in Australia; Wim Delvoye's Cloaca Professional, a machine which turns food into excrement; Stephen Shanabrook's On the road to heaven the highway to hell, remnants from a suicide bomber cast in dark chocolate; and Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary . The curators of MONA are Nicole Durling for Australian contemporary art and Olivier Varenne for international modern and contemporary art . </P> <P> MONA hosts the outdoor MOFO festival, and the wintertime Dark Mofo, with extensive public art exhibitions amid a fairground setting of food and drink, live music and entertainment . Concert performances planned for 2014 include Striborg, Psycroptic, Chris Thile, and The Julie Ruin . </P> <P> Michael Connor of the conservative literary and cultural magazine Quadrant said that "MONA is the art of the exhausted, of a decaying civilisation . Display lights and taste and stunning effects illuminate moral bankruptcy . What is highlighted melds perfectly with contemporary high fashion, design, architecture, cinema . It is expensive and tense decay ." </P> <P> Richard Dorment, art critic for the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said that Walsh "doesn't collect famous names; his indifference to fashion is one of the strengths of the collection . He likes art that is fun and grabs your attention, that packs a sting in the tail or a punch in the solar plexus ." </P>

Museum of old and new art in tasmania