Mona Foma was 'killed' at the expense of this exhibition. Was it worth it?

Of the close to 250 artworks, few are elucidating (save the secreted Wu-Tang album and the leatherbound Tank Project of He Xiangyu). But there is one real reveal: another reason for why Mona Foma was led off behind the barn.

In the museum's app - 'O', the quasi-guide patrons download which explains and satirises the art on Mona's walls - an introductory text to the exhibition tells us that the 16-year-running summer festival was killed so that Name Dropping could live.

The cultural festival scene in Australia has buckled post-Covid - most publicly the music sector of it. It's the usual suspects that are culpable: rising costs, complex regulations, insurance, climate change. And even the multi-millionaires, like the enigmatic art collecting patron of Mona, David Walsh, aren't exempt from the squeeze.

From the little information we receive of Walsh, and his pocketbook politics, the conclusion is that this year has been a consolidation. Prices are rising, and projects are expensive.

Hobart's patron saint appears to have - at the expense of Mona Foma, and the paring back of Dark Mofo - chosen to invest in his baby. Anyone driving past Glenorchy, the Hobart suburb where Walsh grew up, and the now site of Mona, can't but spot the cranes above the museum.

The art collector is purportedly building a "money-intensive" dream library to the tune of $32 million, and he's spared no expense either with Name Dropping. If investment is a rising tide, one would think it would lift all Walsh's boats. But, in this economy, festivals don't seem to float.

And, while not the most surprising divulgence, the insight into Mona's inner financial and philosophical workings (especially those related to Walsh) are always intriguing. Particularly apropos of the show's theme.

As I walked through Name Dropping's 15-room exhibition at Mona - the creation that flung Walsh from periphery to centre stage, where the gambling-syndicate-savant became a celebrity - I wondered if the show was worth it.

For Tasmanians who enjoyed Mona Foma in the north of the state, those who make up much of The Examiner's readership, the festival's loss will surely feel greater than a one-year exhibition and an expanded man-cave for Walsh. (He does live upstairs at the site, after all).

Would it perhaps, as he has done with Dark Mofo, been better to take the foot off the pedal rather than cancelling Foma outright? But also, is it ungrateful for me as a quite literal guest in his house to say: "I'm not sure I like the new rug you bought; it would have been better if you'd spent the money on a party, just for me and all of my mates."

That question stayed with me after I left the exhibition, which says more about me than anyone else - and perhaps that is its purpose.

On 'O', there is an opening question to Name Dropping: "The money used to construct the exhibition you are about to enter could pay for annual Vitamin A supplements for about 1.8 million kids. Arguably, that would save 360 lives. Is it profligate to spend our money on this indulgence? Do you feel guilty? Should we?"

Name Dropping is Walsh reckoning with his cultural ascension, and how he spends, but also him revelling in it. In many ways, the exhibition is a public display of introspection. Mona wouldn't exist without status; it wouldn't exist without its founder-emperor, and in turn, his ego. It is, in many ways, a monument to it.

In some ways, Mona is Walsh's Pharaoh's tomb. A stockpile of wealth that, one day, will be like the "colossal wreck, boundless and bare" of Shelley's great poem Ozymandias. Would some philanthropic good, rather than acquisition, have been a better injection into the world? Could the expenditure of Rameses II on his riches have been better served in healthcare?

Legacy is a tricky thing. Yet Walsh would do well to remember that the Pyramids of Giza do provide something: economic goods, for one, and cultural ones, too.

As with the Cairo counterparts, Mona's impact on Tasmania is enormous, most estimably on the economic front. To put it in a populist tongue, the governmental Lingua Franca: the money flows in from tourists, and in turn creates those most holy of relics, jobs, jobs, jobs. And, for those on the artistic side, it gives the state cultural credits - bona fide ones. So, regardless of how Tasmanian visitors to the venue may feel about its selection of upsetting art, in some way, Mona has improved their lives.

It's not so clear cut, though, which is perhaps where the problem lies. The museum has changed Hobart, but would those efforts to make it, and to improve it, be more useful elsewhere?

And those benefits are the same with the festivals. But rather than a question of profligacy, they were dropped at the expense of another toy. Instead of paying for medicine, Foma's funds went to the museum.

The expansion of Mona seems like a worthy cause to sacrifice Foma and Mofo, if it came to it. But in this instance, with Name Dropping a confused and short-lived show (it runs until next April), I'm still oscillating.

The loss doesn't feel particularly worth it, but maybe it's still too fresh. And in the end, who am I to say? None of these festivals would have existed without Walsh or Mona. His money is his own. These aren't gifts that the giver is taking back, these are services he's in no way required to provide.

Could Walsh have kept the festivals running instead of the exhibition, instead of building his library? Probably. But we'll never know. And did he want to is another question; one which he seemed to answer with a resounding no.

And, with the ethical questions that the show raises, too - it's utilitarianist qualms - the concerns about whether it was "right" or justifiable to cancel a festival feels farcical, even fallacious. (Yet, for a dissenting view, Oscar Wilde once wrote that "aesthetics are higher than ethics").

But like Walsh himself, I do have my solipsistic and avaricious tendencies. Part of me keeps wishing that, instead of buying that 1979 Holden Torana that acts as Name Dropping's centre-piece, we'd had one more big party - one more Mona Foma.

Just for old times' sake.