Dunedin can learn much from Hobart, writes Tom McLean.
Earlier this year I visited Hobart, Tasmania, and found myself thinking about Dunedin.
With a population of about 220,000, Hobart is twice the size of our fair city, but its active port, colonial architecture, cool climate, and relative isolation from the power centres of mainland Australia make it feel like a bigger sister city.
The strongest wave of familiarity hit me as I rode a rented bicycle along the Derwent River. I had an uncanny moment where I thought I was biking from Dunedin towards Port Chalmers.
Yet while the ride and outlook were similar, the destinations were quite different. At the moment, visitors ride Dunedin's lovely bike path to a dead end in St Leonards.
My Hobart destination was a place that has transformed Hobart's tourist economy: the Museum of Old and New Art, better known as MONA.
MONA is the product of one man's vision, taste, and wealth. David Walsh grew up in Glenorchy, a suburb of Hobart. A maths whizz, he came up with a system to beat casinos and made a huge fortune doing so.
He put much of his winnings towards collecting artefacts from two distinctive historical moments: very ancient objects (mummies, cuneiform tablets) and very contemporary art. An early version of the museum was founded in 2001, but MONA proper opened its idiosyncratic doors to the public in January 2011.
Mr Walsh has labelled MONA a ''subversive Disneyland for adults'', and it is an apt description. Typically, after visiting a major art gallery, I think about individual works or artists: Rita Angus' unflinching self-portrait in the DPAG, or Ralph Hotere's masterful Godwit/Kuaka in Auckland.
After a day at MONA, I think about the whole experience. Most visitors arrive by boat from downtown Hobart (though you can bus or bike there as well).
From the water, the museum's rusted iron exterior seems a nod to Ned Kelly's iconic helmet. Visitors ascend from the boat and then descend three storeys into the museum, for the vast majority of the cavernous complex is underground. Mr Walsh's collection is presented in dramatically lit spaces, both vast and small and cut from the hillside stone.
I could go on to describe the collection itself; its fascinating integration of ancient and modern, or its organisation into meditations on sexuality, power, and mortality.
But the important point here is MONA's remarkable impact on the city. Hobart has gone from being a place to visit one of these days to a place to visit now.
Hotels are booked out, new restaurants have appeared, and everyone asks a first-time visitor: ''Have you been to MONA yet?''
MONA has also spawned two music festivals: MOFO, in February, and Dark MOFO, in July. Yes, July. MONA has given culture vultures a reason to visit Hobart in the depths of winter.
And a detour from the bicycle path leads to another recent development, GASP! The Glenorchy Art and Sculpture Park.
Though modest compared to Mr Walsh's museum, GASP! features multicoloured walking paths, a chance to see native flora and fauna, and a moody, rose-tinted pavilion that offers respite from the lashing wind and rain.
Could there be something similar at the (eventual) end of our bicycle lane, in Port Chalmers? There is an obvious choice, since one of New Zealand's greatest artists made his home in the area: a Ralph Hotere Museum of Contemporary Art, with a permanent collection highlighting his career and the work of his friends, a space for changing exhibitions of cutting-edge contemporary art, and a pedestrian-friendly link to Hotere Garden Oputae.
Will tourists be enticed by such a place? MONA suggests they will, as does the recently opened Len Lye Centre, which has been winning design awards and bringing visitors to New Plymouth in droves.
MONA and the Len Lye Centre both received international acclaim for their inventive if pricey architecture, but I can also imagine one of Port Chalmers's stately old buildings being refurbished as a new cultural centre.
The key point is this: cultural attractions are as valuable as sport and nature in drawing visitors to Dunedin. With Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, the Otago Museum, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, the Hocken Library, Olveston, and the Port Chalmers Maritime Museum, we already have a strong claim to be New Zealand's cultural and historic heart.
An innovative arts centre in Port Chalmers would show our commitment to the future as well as the past. It would make that bicycle (or train or bus) trip a requisite for every visitor to New Zealand. And it would add a day in Dunedin to every tourist's itinerary.
In the shorter term, perhaps the council might consider adding more places of cultural interest along the bike path. The path to St Leonards has literally blossomed in recent years, thanks to the hard work of various Dunedin organisations.
I, for one, would like to see one or two more sculptures to accompany Stephen Mulqueen's Kuri/Dog and Regan Gentry's Harbour Mouth Molars, perhaps a work that, like those at GASP!, interacts with the bike path.
Is there a David Walsh among us? There certainly have been. A.H. Reed, Thomas Hocken, Charles Brasch, the de Beers, the Sargoods, Dorothy Theomin. The city has benefited in extraordinary ways from just a handful of forward-thinking men and women.
Is there one more out there?
-Tom McLean teaches in the Department of English and linguistics at the University of Otago.
