Australian court rules museum to ban male visitors from some exhibitions

A Tasmanian art museum has won an appeal in the state Supreme Court against a ban on men from its Ladies Lounge installation, which “gives women a rare glimpse of what it's like to have an advantage,” the BBC reports.

According to the Guardian, the Hobart Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) has a long-standing reputation for being “provocative.” The Ladies Lounge opened in 2020 and houses some of the museum's most famous works.

The artist behind the installation, Kirsha Kechele, said she created the space to highlight the restrictions Australian women faced for decades, such as not being allowed to drink in the main bar area until 1965. She described the exhibition as an “upside-down universe” because men were not allowed in.

Ladies Lounge was forced to close in May when patron Jason Lau sued the museum for gender discrimination and won.

The museum's representatives argued before the state Supreme Court that the Ladies Lounge was a work of art that existed to “highlight and challenge the inequalities that exist for women in all modern spaces by providing an inverted universe in which women feel privileged.” The court agreed with the argument that excluding men from the space was “part of the art itself.”

Jason Lau's attorney, for his part, argued that the art was intended merely to reflect historical inequalities, and as such, it did not constitute affirmative action that promotes equal opportunity in modern society.

Finally, the Supreme Court sided with the museum. The Ladies Lounge was granted an exemption from the state's anti-discrimination law under a clause that allows discrimination if it promotes “equal opportunity” for a marginalized group.

The lower court also made several legal errors, the judge said. The case was sent back to the lower court. A museum spokesman said the Ladies Lounge will not reopen until it receives further instructions from the court. However, artist Kirsha Kechele has already called the Supreme Court's decision a “day of triumph” for women and the museum.

By Nina Petrovich