Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) today unveiled Phrontisterion, a library housing David Walsh’s collection of nonfiction, novels, rare books and maps, autographs and more. It opens to the public from 10am on Sunday 21 June.
David Walsh, Mona’s founder, said: ‘I was always all-in on books and libraries. My first library card was the great leveller, the thing that gave impoverished child-me a chance to seek.’
Phrontisterion, a word that suggests ‘a thinkery’, takes its name from Aristophanes’ marvellous pisstake, Clouds, in which he ridicules the self-certainty of the educated. It’s a place to explore, be entertained, and research topics as diverse as ancient brewing methods, winter rituals, heavy metal pollution, Antarctic exploration, science fiction, sex, casinos, charcuterie and the museum collection.
Rare books include Shakespeare’s ‘First Folio’, the second edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Opticks, and the sixth edition of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, the last produced in the author’s lifetime. There are books signed by Umberto Eco, J.G. Ballard and Hunter S. Thompson, and handwritten documents by Balzac, Bowie, Whitman, Flaubert, Einstein, Newton, Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell.
Mona’s librarian, Mary Lijnzaad, said: ‘If you want to know what David is really like, browse his bookshelves.’
The way Phrontisterion organises books is as idiosyncratic as the collection itself. It uses novel technology to treat books as curatable objects rather than conforming to the Dewey Decimal System, a rigid Christian-centric schema designed long before any of us were born.
Art Processors’ Nic Whyte, who led the development of The O and the new library technology, said: ‘David’s brief was simple: let us put a book anywhere and still find it. So we’ve built a library with no fixed order that stays completely navigable. As far as we know, that doesn’t exist anywhere else.’
A slick new digital reader, also developed by Art Processors, will allow visitors to engage with books and objects too precious to be handled.
Phrontisterion has a map room, a study, a lounge, and a cave-like children’s library that includes books from the personal collections of David’s daughters Grace and Sunday, crannies stuffed with kid-friendly curios, and an Ames illusion room (that must be seen if not believed).
As well as books, there are artworks by Joshua Yeldham, Lucas Grogan, Rachel Marks, Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu, Matthew Barney and Julian Charrière, and a magnificent desk, staircase and chandeliers by local blacksmith and artist Pete Mattila.
Phrontisterion is connected to Mona’s existing buildings via tunnels in the sandstone. It’s located in the space beneath the inverted-ziggurat levels of Elektra, Anselm Kiefer’s monumental concrete amphitheatre.
