David Walsh (b. 1961), professional gambler, art collector and gallerist, established Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Walsh grew up in the blue-collar Hobart suburb of Glenorchy. After beginning a science degree at the University of Tasmania, he left university, directing his mathematical skills towards various gambling enterprises with his long time business partner Zeljko Ranogajek. The pair’s involvement in poker, blackjack and horseracing brought them renown as gamblers and they became the faces of the Bank Roll, the world’s largest gambling syndicate. Walsh began investing his winnings in art in the early-1990s. In 1995 he bought the Northern-Hobart peninsula of Moorilla, and in 2001 opened the Moorilla Museum of Antiques in the modernist home of the previous owners. During this period he continued to collect antiquities but also invested in contemporary international art. Construction of a new museum on the Moorilla site began in 2009. Three years later MONA opened as Australia’s largest privately-owned collection of art and artefacts on display in a public art museum. The years since have seen a very significant surge in tourism to Hobart.
