What’s in a Name? Mao, Margaret Thatcher and Marie Antoinette Offer Answers at MONA

He Xiangyu, Tank Project, 2011-2013. Courtesy of Mona / Jesse Hunniford

Objects, when touched by fame or infamy, often gain a rare mystique. This allure is only broken when the historical connection becomes a fiction. Take Head of a Man (1886), a painting supposedly done by the Dutch great Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Australia proudly displayed this work for decades as an obscure addition done by the Dutch master—that is, before it was found to be a fake. It may no longer receive prime position at that institution, but it does in the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA)’s “Namedropping,” a new exhibition mapping the contours and complexities of status and celebrity.

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The Australian show is interested in how art and ephemera gain power and potency through their associations with history—or rejection from it. The Van Gogh painting, the only horizontal portrait formerly attributed to the painter (a fact that led to its undoing), was only the second Australia-owned piece by the post-Impressionist. It’s why MONA chose to spotlight the inauthentic portrait, alongside other genuine artworks, in an exercise examining the nature of historical allure.

Developed over four years and featuring about 250 works, “Namedropping” is MONA’s largest show in a decade and extends over fifteen enormous rooms. The gallery is notorious in Australia, especially for its provocative displays—like Cloaca Professional (2010), a self-regulating “poo machine,” or Hermann Nitsch’s performative bull slaughter in 2017—and the unabashed flamboyance of its founder,

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