One of the viral sensations of 2024 has been Ladies Lounge, an installation by artist Kirsha Kaechele at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, which excluded men as a statement about sexism. The space was, said the artist, stocked with Picasso canvases collected by Kaechele’s grandmother, along with rare jewelry and other treasures from the museum’s holdings, and the only men allowed were those who would wait on the female patrons, pouring them champagne and attending to their every need.
Jason Lau, a visitor from New South Wales, sued for gender discrimination; the court ruled against Kaechele, who pledged to take the case to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, she took advantage of a loophole that would still allow her to exclude men by moving the paintings to the bathrooms, renaming the project the Ladies’ Room. But to many observers, it seemed like the joke was on the plaintiff all along: “[men’s] experience of rejection is the artwork,” the artist said.
Inside the Ladies Room in MONA. Photo: Mona/Eden Meure, courtesy the Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Well, it turns out the joke was on all of us, at least to some extent, because those weren’t Picassos after all. Kaechele painted them herself. They’re in no way a variation of Luncheon on the Grass, After Manet (1961) and of Woman Lying on Sofa (1961).
The artist has published a post on the museum’s blog that explains the backstory, starting, naturally, with some classic (and apparently genuine!) Picasso wisdom (corrected for gender inclusivity, naturally): “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of [her] lies.”
After the installation has been in place for nearly four years, she said, the “Picasso Administration” and a journalist are on to her. (The Picasso Administration is closed for the summer, per an auto-reply email; Kaechele didn’t identify the journalist.) Those supposedly antique New Guinean spears? Brand new, not collected by Kaechele’s grandfather on an expedition with Michael Rockefeller. The precious jewelry from her great-grandmother’s holdings? Brand new and in some cases plastic. A mink rug made by Princess Mary’s royal furrier? Cheap polyester.
The Picassos, of course, were central, she explained, especially since genuine Picassos are extremely valuable and, complicating matters, “his record with women is… intense.” But, she added, “I liked that a misogynist would dominate the walls of the Ladies Lounge.” But where to source Picassos that would match the lounge’s green color scheme? She joked with a friend about painting them herself, she wrote, but once the idea took hold, she decided it was the perfect approach.
Kirsha Kaechele. Courtesy Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania.
When installation day came, the museum displayed one of the “Picasso” paintings upside down, and Kaechele wrote that she lived in fear that she would be found out: “I imagined that a Picasso scholar, or maybe just a Picasso fan, or maybe just someone who googles things, would visit the Ladies Lounge and see that the painting was upside down and expose me on social media.”
Some of the women who visited the lounge, she wrote, seem to have gotten the joke, since they gave her a wink after reading the texts that accompany the objects. But the rest of us, including us journalists, writing about the project but for some reason not googling the Picassos in question, did not get the gag.
“I am relieved I have told you because now we can revel together in this madness,” she wrote. “Assuming you still want to speak to me. (I hope you can forgive me.)”