No ‘HoMo’, Bro: MONA Has Abandoned Its Original Name For Its Hotel

Back in July last year, Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) announced plans for a ridiculously huge and bougie new hotel set to go up on the site of the beloved museum’s grounds. The absolute best part of it all was its name: HoMo.

Obviously stemming from a combination of the words Hotel and MONA, the glorious name for a river-side hotel in Tasmania (a state once known for being incredibly recalcitrant in legislating LGBTIQ rights) is unfortunately no more. Its replacement? The asinine and boring “Motown”. UGH!

So much room for activities though.

In an update on the impending hotel’s progress, MONA, founded by the insanely rich eccentric David Walsh, announced the name change alongside some other bits of news via its website.

“After consultation with the MONA staff force, and with the community beyond, we decided to ditch it.”, it reads. “As much as we had meant the name very much in a celebratory way (we hoped the name would keep homophobes at bay), it was decided that it wasn’t David’s joke to make, what with his white man’s sausage and all.”

Now I think that line re: sausage is a throwback to earlier in the ~kooky~ press release which goes “We want you to see how the sausage is made. (‘The sausage’ here stands for everything from the operations of the artworld, to the way the building itself was created; not to mention David Walsh’s—ahem— ego.)”

Still doesn’t exactly make sense but the gist is Walsh doesn’t feel comfortable using the name HoMo for his new shiny hotel due to being a rich straight white male who has never faced the discriminations and hardships of a minority group such as homosexuals.

Concept art of the hotel’s performance space which DOES NOT look like a butthole. At all.

As a loud and proud homo myself, I get it. I still think it would have been a truly bold hotel name and was very excited to tell anyone who’d listen that I was “off to stay at HoMo”, but the argument against it is incredibly sound. To many queer people, the word “homo” still carries with it the pain and fear of a time when the phrase was regularly wielded as a slur so it’s also understandable they may not be super down with plastering it all over a Tasmanian hotel. The name Motown still sucks though.

Set to open in 2024 the fuck off big hotel and surrounds will feature a theatre, spa centre, outdoor concert stage conference facilities and a giant library to house Walsh’s “large and growing nerd fest of bibliophilic paraphernalia courtesy of total lightweights like Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Dickens”. Yes, that’s from the official press release. I told you the dude was weird.

Head to their website for more details and pour some out for the dearly departed name HoMo. You were too beautiful for this world sweetie.