![\"Elektra](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/62f8946af04bff4a4c7fef0e73e7a920.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart has announced the completion of a new wing for the building, set to open in June. A communique from the museum notes that the extension has been designed by Australian architect Nonda Katsalidis, working alongside German artist Anselm Kiefer and the museum\u2019s founder and owner David Walsh.<\/p>\n
According to the museum, the new wing is the result of \u201cfour years of construction and ten years of headaches,\u201d costing almost tenfold its initial $11 million budget at over $100 million. It will feature a library to house Walsh\u2019s collection of rare books, maps and other paraphernalia, along with artworks by Kiefer, French-Swiss artist Julian Charri\u00e8re and others.<\/p>\n
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View gallery<\/p>\n
The media communique notes that the project has been dubbed \u201cPhrontisterion\u201d \u2013 a term coined by Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes to describe a \u201cthinkery,\u201d with the building\u2019s contents \u201creveal[ing] a way of treating books as curatable objects.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walsh said, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In keeping with the building\u2019s previous additions<\/a>, an underground tunnel<\/a> carved through sandstone will connect Phrontisterion to the existing museum<\/a>, which was designed by Fender Katsalidis and completed in 2011, winning the Australian Institute of Architects 2012 Sir Zelman Cowan Award for Public Architecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n The library itself is located beneath Kiefer\u2019s Elektra, an amphitheatre likened to an inverted ziggurat, which was first built by Kiefer at his studio at La Ribaute in Barjac, Southern France, and which was inaugurated in December 2025.<\/p>\n Kiefer commented, \u201cI like this idea to have Barjac on the other side of the globe. It\u2019s fantastic. It contradicts the laws of gravity.\u201d<\/p>\n Sculptures and paintings by Kiefer will be installed throughout. The new wing will also accommodate Breathe, a permanent installation by Charri\u00e8re that invites visitors to breathe air that has never been breathed before.<\/p>\n Charri\u00e8re said, \u201cWe had to learn how to dislodge 2.4-billion-year-old oxygen from red-banded iron ore formed during the Great Oxidation Event, a technically demanding process involving years of scientific collaboration, the building of a chemical reactor, and sourcing ancient material from the Pilbara region of Western Australia, formed in Proterozoic seas during the rise of oxygen likely driven by early cyanobacteria.\u201d<\/p>\n View gallery<\/p>\n The opening of the new wing will coincide with the return of Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda\u2019s light-tower, Spectra, as well as the MONA debut of In Absence<\/a>, an architectural installation by local Kokatha\/Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce and Melbourne architects Aaron Roberts and Kim Bridgland for the 2019 NGV Architecture Commission.<\/p>\n The nine-metre-high timber tower takes inspiration from traditional eel traps and is adorned with 1,400 hand-blown, black glass murnong, or daisy yams. It will be built anew, after the original installation was, according to writer Adair Winder, \u201cpainstakingly dismantled\u201d and repurposed into a site-specific intervention<\/a> in a former sandstone quarry in Victoria\u2019s Otway Ranges, as part of a collaborative project between Monash University students and These Are The Projects We Do Together.<\/p>\n View gallery<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8ffe2e0291764bf048c2c73d4e7d1322.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9eda9da4bff45d9f5fc0a1c4e1f48c9d.jpg\")
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