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The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) – that celebrated institution perched in Hobart, Tasmania, the one that rethinks how a gallery should work – teams up with AWC to open 'MONA Bangkok' at Asiatique The Riverfront, right on the edge of the Chao Phraya. It's set for 2029. Asiatique already draws crowds each evening with its riverside night market, its restaurants and its Ferris wheel lit up against the water, so the location comes with a ready-made buzz.
Here's why it excites us. This isn't a franchise flown in and bolted on. MONA arrives ready to be rewritten in Thai. Local artists, local stories and the particular character of this city all fold through the creative vision until the project becomes a genuine exchange. Leigh Carmichael, the DarkLab chief steering the work, says everything gathers around one idea: 'light'. Light as physics, light as hope and light as the warm glow Bangkok wears so well after dark.
And then the cable car. The world's first to cross the Chao Phraya with no support pillars in the water, designed not merely as transport but as kinetic art, weaving colour, sound, movement and technology together so the crossing becomes part of the visit. You're enjoying the experience before you even reach the door.
So what actually is MONA? The vision of collector David Walsh, it's the largest privately owned museum in Australia, and it does things differently. You carry 'The O', a handheld digital guide that lets you follow whatever grabs you through the ancient, the modern and the wonderfully unexpected. Everybody walks a different path and everybody leaves with their own story.
More than 25 years of that inventiveness now heads north. The ambition is generous – to give Bangkok a genuine landmark and a proud place among the world's great cities for anyone who loves art.
Behave? Not a chance. We'll see you in 2029.