An Australian gallery’s Picasso exhibition that sparked a gender war was not actually a work by the Spanish painter

An Australian art gallery sparked a gender war when it decided to display so-called works by Pablo Picasso in an exhibition reserved for women only. But it has now been revealed that the artworks at the centre of the uproar were not actually by Picasso or any other famous artist, but were painted by the curator of the women-only exhibition.

Kirsha Kaechele wrote on the blog of the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) on Wednesday that she identified herself as the creator of the works after being questioned by a reporter and the Picasso administration in France about their authenticity.

“I waited for weeks. Nothing happened. I was sure it would explode. But it didn’t,” she wrote.

The artworks were on display for more than three years before their origins were questioned, she said, even though she had accidentally hung one of the fake paintings upside down.

She added: “I imagined that a Picasso expert, or maybe just a Picasso fan, or maybe just someone who googles things, would visit the Ladies Lounge and see that the painting was hanging upside down and expose me on social media.”

But nobody did.

The saga began when Kaechele created a women-only area at MONA in 2020 where visitors could “enjoy the pure company of women” and as a sign of their exclusion from male-dominated spaces throughout history.

“The idea is to make men as crazy as possible,” wrote Kaechele.

The so-called Ladies Lounge offered high tea, massages and champagne served by male butlers and was open to anyone who identified as a woman. Extraordinary and absurd title cards were displayed alongside fake paintings, antiques and jewelry that was “quite obviously new and in some cases plastic,” she added.

Kaechele wrote this week that the lounge would have to display “the most important works of art in the world” so that the men “would feel excluded as much as possible.”

It worked.

In March, a Civil and Administrative Tribunal in Tasmania ordered that MONA should no longer deny men access to the Ladies Lounge. A male visitor to the gallery lodged a complaint because he was upset at being denied access to the premises during a visit in 2023.

“The participation of visitors in the process of granting or denying access is part of the artwork itself,” wrote the tribunal’s vice-chair, Richard Grueber, in his decision declaring the exhibition discriminatory.

Grueber ruled that the man had been discriminated against, in part because the artworks in the Ladies Lounge were so valuable. Kaechele had described them in the hearing as “a carefully curated selection of paintings by the world’s leading artists, including two paintings that demonstrate Picasso’s genius in a spectacular way.”

The court ordered that MONA no longer bar men from entering. In his ruling, Grueber also sharply criticized a group of women who had come to support Kaechele, dressed in appropriate business attire and crossing and uncrossing their legs in silence and in unison throughout the hearing. One woman “purposefully read feminist texts,” he wrote, and the group left the court “in a slow march, led by Ms. Kaechele, to the strains of a Robert Palmer song.”

Her behavior was “inappropriate, rude and disrespectful and, at worst, shameful and contemptuous,” Grueber added.

Instead of allowing men into the exhibition, Kaechele, who is married to gallery owner David Walsh, installed a working toilet in the space and converted it into a women’s restroom, thus exploiting a loophole in the law and continuing to deny men access.

International news agencies reported on the development in May and apparently did not question the gallery’s decision to hang Picasso paintings in a public toilet. However, the Guardian reported on Wednesday that Kaechele was asked about the authenticity of the work and she made a confession.

A spokesperson for MONA told the Associated Press that the gallery would not provide further details about the letter Kaechele allegedly received from the Picasso administration. When AP asked MONA to confirm that the statements in Kaechele’s blog post, titled “Art is not truth: Pablo Picasso,” were accurate, spokeswoman Sara Gates-Matthews said the post was “truthfully Kirsha’s admission.”

The Picasso Administration, which manages the estate of the late Spanish artist, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“I am flattered that people thought my great-grandmother was spending the summer with Picasso in her Swiss castle, where he and my grandmother were lovers, when, because of some indiscretions, she threw a plate at him, which bounced off his head and caused the crack you see slowly running through the gold ceramic plate in the Ladies Lounge,” Kaechele wrote this week, referring to the title card of a painting.

“The real plate would have killed him – it was made of solid gold. Well, it would have left a dent in his forehead, because the real plate is actually a coin.”