A wall of vulvas. A performance with a recently slaughtered bull. A ‘poo machine’ that mimics the journey of food through the human body.

The Museum of new and old art, or MONA, in Hobart, the capital of the Australian state of Tasmania, is no stranger to works that can shock or appall, or the criticism they can provoke. But this week it defended an unusual claim: a work of art, one visitor complained, broke discrimination laws.

The Ladies Lounge – soft green curtains, lush surroundings, original works by Picasso and Sidney Nolan – is an installation by American artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele. It opened in December 2020 and, according to the MONA website, is open to “all ladies” – and to exactly zero men, apart from the solicitous butlers who serve the women inside.

Like other men, Jason Lau was not allowed to enter the installation when he visited the museum in April 2023. Mr Lau filed a complaint with Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, saying he was discriminated against because of his gender.

The case was heard by the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Hobart on Tuesday.

“I visited MONA, paid 35 Australian dollars,” or about $23, “expecting to have access to the museum, and was quite surprised when I was told I would not be able to see one exhibit, the Ladies Lounge” , Mr Lau said at the hearing, according to Australian news media reports. “Everyone who buys a ticket expects a fair delivery of goods and services.”

In an interview, Ms. Kaechele said she agreed with Mr. Lau but that his experience with discrimination was central to the work.

“Given the conceptual power of the artwork and the value of the artwork within the artwork, its harm is real,” she said. “He’s confused.”

The work was necessarily discriminatory, Catherine Scott, Ms. Kaechele’s attorney, has acknowledged. But, she argued, by denying men access, they could still experience it, albeit in a different way.

During the proceedings on Tuesday, Ms. Scott cited a legal exception that says discrimination can be acceptable if it is “intended to promote equal opportunity for a group of people who are disadvantaged or have a special need because of a prescribed characteristic.”

“This case asks the tribunal to realize that art can in fact promote equal opportunity in a different way, in a way that is more on a conceptual level,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Kaechele, married to David Walsh, the museum’s founder, appeared at Tuesday’s hearing, followed by a phalanx of 25 women in pearls and navy suits, many of them also artists, who silently read feminist texts and posed: beating their legs crossed and applied lipstick at the same time.

In August, another male visitor filed a complaint of gender discrimination over the job, a museum spokeswoman said. That led to a dialogue with Ms. Kaechele.

“I said, ‘Well, you did get to experience the work of art, because the exclusion of men is the work of art,’” Ms. Kaechele said. “So he appreciated that, he understood it, and he dropped the case.”

The Ladies Lounge draws inspiration from men-only spaces in Australia past and present, she said. In Australia, women were not allowed to enter public bars until 1965, and were often relegated to the so-called ‘ladies lounge’, a smaller space where more expensive drinks were often sold.

But discrimination against women is not just a matter of historical data. Australia still has that a pay gap between men and women of approximately 20 percent, women are still underrepresented in leadership and management positions in almost all industries, the Australian government saidand a number of elite gentlemen’s clubs, such as the Melbourne Club, still exclude women from membership.

These clubs exist to connect important men and strengthen patriarchal power structures, Ms. Kaechele said. “In our lounge we just drink champagne and sit on the couch. I don’t think there is a big parallel.”

The work was meant to be funny and the sense of humor came from the fact that women remain marginalized in Australian life, she added. “It’s meant to highlight the past and be lighthearted,” she said, “and we can only do that because we are women and we lack power.”

Mr Lau, who could not be reached for comment, has asked for a formal apology and for men to be given access to the Lounge or pay a reduced ticket price to compensate for their losses, which Ms Kaechele has refused. “I’m not sorry,” she said, “and you can’t come in.”

A tribunal decision is expected in the coming weeks.

For MONA and Ms. Kaechele as an artist, even the possible closure of the exhibition had some benefits, says Anne Marsh, an art historian based in Melbourne.

“Noisy art is good art, loud feminism is good feminism,” she said. “It will be on the agenda.”

The American Museum of Natural History will close two major galleries where Native American artifacts are displayed, leaders said Friday, in a dramatic response to new federal regulations that require museums to obtain permission from tribes before displaying or researching cultural objects.

“The galleries we are closing are artifacts from an era when museums like ours failed to respect the values, perspectives and even shared humanity of Indigenous peoples,” Sean Decatur, president of the museum, wrote in a letter to museum staff Friday morning . . “Actions that may seem sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

The museum will close galleries dedicated to the Eastern Woodlands and the Great Plains this weekend, and close several other display cases of Native American cultural artifacts as it reviews its vast collection to make sure it complies with new federal rules. which came into effect this month.

Museums across the country have covered exhibitions as curators scramble to determine whether they can be shown under the new regulations. The Field Museum in Chicago has covered some display cases, Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology said it would remove all funerary belongings from its exhibits and the Cleveland Museum of Art has covered up some cases.

But the action of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which attracts 4.5 million visitors a year, making it one of the most visited museums in the world, sends a strong message to the field. The museum's anthropology department is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the United States and is known for its groundbreaking work under a long line of curators, including Franz Boas and Margaret Mead. The closures mean that almost 10,000 square meters of exhibition space are no longer accessible to visitors; the museum said it could not provide an exact timeline for when the reconsidered exhibitions would reopen.

“Some objects may never be displayed again as a result of the consultation process,” Decatur said in an interview. “But we want to create smaller-scale programs throughout the museum that can explain what kind of process is going on.”

The changes are the result of a concerted effort by the Biden administration to expedite the repatriation of Native American remains, burial objects and other sacred objects. The process began in 1990 with the approval of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which established protocols for museums and other institutions to return human remains, burial objects, and other property to tribes. But because these efforts have dragged on for decades, the law has been criticized by tribal representatives as too slow and too susceptible to institutional resistance.

This month, new federal regulations came into effect and were intended to expedite returns, giving institutions five years to prepare all human remains and associated funerary objects for repatriation, giving tribes more authority throughout the process.

“We are finally being heard – and it's not a fight, it's a conversation,” said Myra Masiel-Zamora, archaeologist and curator at the Pechanga Band of Indians.

Even in the two weeks since the new regulations took effect, she said, she has felt the tone of conversations shifting. In the past, institutions often viewed indigenous oral histories as less convincing than academic studies when determining which modern tribes to repatriate objects to, she said. But the new regulations require institutions to “adhere to Native American traditional knowledge of direct descendants, Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”

“We can say, 'This has to come back,' and I hope there won't be any pushback,” Masiel-Zamora said.

Museum leaders have been preparing for the new regulations for months, consulting with lawyers and curators and holding lengthy meetings to discuss what might need to be hidden or removed. Many institutions plan to hire staff to comply with the new rules, which may require extensive consultation with tribal representatives.

The result is a major shift in practice when it comes to Native American exhibits in some of the country's most important museums – a change that will be noticeable to visitors.

At the American Museum of Natural History, portions of the collection once used to teach students about the Iroquois, Mohegans, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other groups will be temporarily inaccessible. That includes large artifacts, such as the birch bark canoe of Menominee origin in the Hall of Eastern Woodlands, and smaller ones, including darts dating to 10,000 B.C. and a Hopi Katsina doll from what is now Arizona. Student field trips to the Hall of Eastern Woodlands are being reconsidered now that they cannot access those galleries.

“What may seem out of alignment to some people is the result of an idea that museums put in amber descriptions of the world,” Decatur says. “But museums are at their best when they reflect changing ideas.”

The display of Native American human remains is generally prohibited in museums, so the collections under review include sacred objects, grave belongings and other items of cultural heritage. While the new regulations have been discussed and debated over the past year, some professional organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, have expressed concerns that the rules are overreaching in museums' collection management practices. But since the regulations came into effect on January 12, there has been little public resistance from museums.

Much of the human remains and indigenous cultural artifacts were collected through practices now considered antiquated and even odious, including donations by grave robbers and archaeological excavations that cleared indigenous burial sites.

“This is human rights work, and we should look at it as such and not as science,” said Candace Sall, director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Missouri, which is still working to repatriate the remains of more than 2,400 Native Americans. individuals. Sall said she has added five staff members to work on repatriation in anticipation of the regulations, and hopes to add more.

Criticism of the pace of repatriation had put institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History under public pressure. In more than 30 years, the museum has repatriated the remains of approximately 1,000 individuals to tribal groups; it still contains the remains of approximately 2,200 Native Americans and thousands of funerary objects. (Last year, the museum said it would review practices that extended to its larger collection of some 12,000 skeletons by removing human bones from public display and improving the storage facilities where they are kept.)

A top priority of the new regulations, which are administered by the Ministry of the Interior, is to complete the work of repatriating the human remains of the indigenous population in institutional enterprises, which number more than 96,000 individuals. according to federal data published in the fall.

The government has given institutions a deadline giving them until 2029 to prepare human remains and their burial belongings for repatriation.

In many cases, human remains and cultural objects have little information associated with them, which has delayed repatriation in the past, especially for institutions that have sought demanding anthropological and ethnographic evidence of ties to a modern indigenous group.

Now the government is urging institutions to follow through with the information they have, in some cases relying solely on geographic information – such as in which province the remains were discovered.

Some tribal officials are concerned that the new rules will result in a flood of requests from museums that may exceed their capabilities and impose a financial burden.

In June I spoke with a Commission assessing the law's implementation, Scott Willard, who works on repatriation issues for the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, expressed concern that rhetoric about the new regulations sometimes made it sound as if Native ancestors were “disposable.”

“This garage sale mentality of 'give it all away now' is very insulting to us,” Willard said.

The officials who drafted the new regulations have said institutions can get extensions on their deadlines as long as the tribes they consult with agree, stressing the need to hold institutions accountable without overburdening tribes. If museums are found to have broken the rules, fines may be imposed.

Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs and former tribal president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said the rules were developed in consultation with tribal representatives, who wanted their ancestors to regain their dignity after death.

“Repatriation is not just a rule on paper,” Newland said, “but it brings real meaningful healing and closure to people.”

Good morning. It is Wednesday. We will see how school trips develop. We’ll also find out what Governor Kathy Hochul said when she signed a bill calling for a state task force to consider reparations for the lasting effects of slavery.

The fifth graders on a field trip entered a large, noisy room. The girls held their noses together. The boys were impressed.

They were in the smelliest part of a wastewater treatment plant on Long Island.

Having schoolchildren in that room was indicative of how field trips have evolved as science curricula have changed. The children from Oceanside School 8 in Oceanside, NY, had been learning about water and what happens when dirty water flows down the drain or toilet at home.

“This gives them a chance to see firsthand something they just read about in class,” said Lauren Sternberg, communications manager at the treatment plant, one of three in Nassau County operated by the conglomerate Veolia under a long-term contract .

The factory, in East Rockaway, NY, is a relatively new field trip destination. The American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan does not.

Field trips to the museum have been a ritual for New York City schoolchildren for generations; As many as 400,000 children visit the museum every year in school and camp groups. Lisa Gugenheim, director of the museum, remembers her first visit to the museum: “I’m pretty sure it was in second grade,” she said.

But since opening a $465 million addition last year, the museum has broadened its offerings — not just what student groups can see, but also how much time they can spend looking. Gugenheim called a pilot program that began last month “the evolution of the excursion.”

The traditional excursion lasts one day. The pilot program allows classes to treat the entire museum as a classroom every day for a week.

“This is not just a meeting with a scientist,” Gugenheim said. “It has a program that connects the classroom, the museum and science. That is the job of a museum today: we want to impact the lives of young people, not just on a day off from school, but for their entire lives.”

Among the first to go to the museum every day for a week were 35 fifth-graders and four teachers from the museum New American Academy at Roberto Clemente State Park. They studied how climate change affects life in the oceans, Gugenheim said. But they also spent time visiting a new elephant exhibit, estimating the size of a dinosaur and learning about the diversity of insects.

“This was unlike anything a single field trip could achieve,” Gugenheim said.

At the wastewater treatment plant – where the plant manager, Joseph Cappetti, led the tour – students watched as wide metal arms removed debris, such as paper towels, that had flowed in with the dirty water. That prompted one student to ask the question: “Do you find dangerous things?”

Walter Dobkowski, the plant’s environmental and health safety specialist, talked about hypodermic needles: “I’ve found one here in nine years,” he said. Cappetti said toys used to appear, but now, “everything is digital, so you don’t see as many plastic toys around here.”

Cappetti said the group asked smart questions, such as one about centrifugal force, after he said it is how grit, rocks and dirt are separated from the water in a giant tank. (These solids are then pumped out of the bottom of the tank.)

“Listen, they love it,” said Laura Cassar-James, one of the teachers. Anthony Rosenberg, 10, clearly did.

“I want to work here,” he declared, “because I know a lot more now.”

Weather

A sunny day with temperatures around 40 degrees. The evening remains clear with temperatures around thirty degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In force until December 25 (Christmas Day).

Have you ever wondered who’s behind the food and souvenir shops in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and on Ellis Island? My colleague Patrick McGeehan has the answer:

The family of Bradford Hill has been selling souvenirs to visitors to the Statue of Liberty for more than 90 years.

The National Park Service announced Tuesday that the family-owned company, Evelyn Hill Inc., had defeated some of the nation’s largest food service operators to win a new contract for the food and retail concessions at Liberty Island and Ellis Island. The contract runs through 2036, the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.

Hill’s business, named after his grandmother, has fallen on hard times since his grandfather put a cart on a dock near the statue in 1931.

Then, as now, Evelyn Hill’s business is entirely dependent on tourists arriving on ferries from Lower Manhattan or New Jersey, so economic crises like the coronavirus pandemic could be disastrous.

The park service recorded 3.1 million visitors last year, up from 4.2 million in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic began. Hill, 67, said business had been better recently than before Covid-19 crippled tourism. In 2019, the concessions generated approximately $32 million. That total dropped to $4.2 million in 2020, park service documents show.

The park service told companies bidding for the contract to expect annual revenue of about $40 million, with the federal government keeping about $8 million before taxes.

The stores are staffed by approximately 120 employees at this time of year. The number rises to nearly 300 during the summer months, Hill said, adding that he was working on ways to expedite purchases during particularly busy times.

“People want to see the sights, not wait in line for food,” he said.

New York considers reparations for descendants of enslaved people

New York will create a task force as part of an ambitious effort to address the state’s history of slavery and racism.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed a bill that directs a new commission to study the history of slavery and its harmful effects, including housing discrimination, income inequality and police bias. She called on New Yorkers “to be the patriots and rebuke – not excuse – our role in profiting from the institution of slavery.” New York banned slavery in 1827.

With the task force, New York will join California and Illinois at the forefront of reparations.

My colleagues Grace Ashford and Luis Ferré-Sadurni write that it is too early to say what kind of restitution, if any, the task force might recommend for descendants of enslaved people. In California, a multi-billion dollar price tag threatens to thwart the reparations project.

Hochul acknowledged the political risks of starting a conversation about historical wrongs, though she said standing up against racism “meant more than just giving people a simple apology 150 years later.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton appeared at the bill signing ceremony in Hochul and thanked her for her “boldness and courage” in supporting the bill. Edit and the State Senateboth controlled by Democrats, were passed in June.

But Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt said New York had atoned for slavery with “blood and lives” during the Civil War. Ortt, whose district includes Niagara Falls, also said in a statement that the commission was “divisive” and “unworkable.”

METROPOLITAN diary

Soup is on

Dear Diary:

During a two-week trip to the city, I walked into a corner restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen on a Sunday evening.

Everything on the menu looked good. While I was trying to decide which soup to order, a bowl came for a man sitting alone next to me.

“What soup is that?” I said after he had his first taste.

I immediately regretted asking. This was New York, and my talkativeness felt out of place. Don’t be so annoying, I thought to myself.

Italy’s culture ministry has announced new leaders at some of the country’s top museums, including the Uffizi in Florence – one of the the world’s most visited art institutions and home to hundreds of masterpieces, including paintings by Botticelli, Caravaggio and Michelangelo.

The Nationalist Government said in a press release Friday that the new director of the Uffizi would be Simone Verde, an art historian who currently heads the Uffizi Pilotta complex of museums in Parma, in northern Italy.

Verde, 48, studied theoretical philosophy in Rome before earning a degree in art history from the École du Louvre in Paris. He has also worked at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, as the museum’s head of scientific research and publications.

Verde, who starts a four-year term in January, replaces Eike Schmidt, who led the Uffizi for the past eight years. The Ministry of Culture announced that Schmidt would take over another Italian museum: the Capodimonte Museum, in Napleswhose collection includes paintings by Caravaggio, Titian and Gentileschi.

Still, Schmidt, who recently suggested he might leave the museum world for politics, is keeping his options open. He has been since the appointment told Italian reporters that he would decide in January whether to run for mayor of Florence, adding that he could not do that job while running a museum at the same time.

“How can you imagine spending half the week in Naples and the other half in Florence?” Schmidt said: according to Corriere del Mezzogiornoa local edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera: “It would be absurd.”

A spokesperson for the Uffizi said Schmidt and Verde were not available for comment.

The culture ministry’s announcement, which included new leadership for eight other museums, could signal a change in the outlook for the Italian art world.

Eight years ago, a previous Italian government passed a reform that paved the way for foreigners to take the helm at some of the country’s most important museums, including Schmidt, who was born in Germany, at the Uffizi; Sylvain Bellenger, a French art historian, at the Capodimonte Museum; and James Bradburne, a Canadian-born British cultural manager, at the Brera art museum in Milan.

All of the appointees announced on Friday are Italian. (Schmidt recently received Italian citizenship.)

Vittorio Sgarbi, the deputy culture minister, joked on Saturday that Stella Falzone, who will head the National Archaeological Museum in Taranto, was the only “foreigner” among the new directors because she had previously worked at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna . The ANSA news agency reported that Sgarbi described the decision of the previous minister, who had opted for more international candidates, as foreigner-loving ‘intoxication’.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced it had laid off 10 employees in response to a challenging economic moment in the art world.

It was the latest shock to the museum industry, with a number of institutions across the country cutting staff and raising ticket prices to new heights. When the Guggenheim raised the price of adult admission from $25 to $30 over the summer, it cited a lack of visitors and declining membership at a time when costs have skyrocketed due to inflation, higher labor costs and insurance, as well as rising shipping costs.

The layoffs included two deputy directors, as well as several longtime employees of the visitor services and communications departments. The ten jobs that were cut amounted to 2.5 percent of all employees.

“Like many other institutions, rising costs and inflation have put pressure on our budget,” museum spokeswoman Sara Fox said in a statement. “Over the past few months, we have taken proactive steps to reduce our deficit by increasing admission prices and reducing costs where possible. Unfortunately, the museum will not be able to support our current workforce.”

The layoffs came as a surprise, according to Maida Rosenstein, organizing director of Local 2110, a chapter of the United Auto Workers that represents some Guggenheim employees and those at several other museums in the city.

“It was a real slap in the face to the employees who have been working there for years,” said Rosenstein, who said two people in her unit were affected, adding that the union was seeking a meeting with management about the layoffs.

The Guggenheim union, which represents nearly 150 curators, conservators and other employees, signed its first contract with the museum in August after more than two years of negotiations.

In recent days, several other museums have cut jobs, citing a tough financial picture. In November, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art eliminated 20 staff positions, citing a 35 percent drop in visitor numbers from 2019.

The Dallas Museum of Art had also opened a month earlier Lay off 20 employees and said it would no longer be open to the public on Tuesdays to save money.

The resignation from the Guggenheim came shortly after the curators announced that Mariët Westermann had been appointed as the next director. She was praised for her connections to Abu Dhabi, where she is vice chancellor of New York University’s campus and where the museum is expected to open a new location in 2026. That project has been heavily delayed, partly due to protests over the fate of the migrant workers employed on the project. She will start her new role in June.

For now, the museum said layoffs will better position the museum to face the future.

“These colleagues have shown dedication and commitment to the museum and we thank them for their hard work,” said Fox, the museum spokeswoman. “These steps will better position the Guggenheim as a future-proof, sustainable museum as we continue to uphold our mission.”