A museum in Australia can bar men from the ‘Ladies Lounge’ exhibition, a regional top court says

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A museum in Australia was within its rights to bar men from a controversial art exhibit for women meant to underscore their exclusion from segments of the male-dominated society, a top regional court said on Friday. On Friday, Tasmania’s Supreme Court threw out on appeal an order for Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art, where the exhibit opened in 2020, to stop refusing male patrons entry to the show. Friday’s ruling was a victory for Kaechele, who said in July that the purpose of the “Ladies Lounge” — open to all who identified as women — was to make men “feel as excluded as possible.” Catherine Scott, a lawyer representing the museum, said the ruling Friday recognized that the “Ladies Lounge” challenged inequality by “providing a flipped universe where women experience advantage.” During the hearings, Scott had presented a 2024 report card by the Australian government on gender equality, which shows that women working full-time earn 12% less than men. Kaechele claimed the court’s decision reflected what she holds as “a simple truth: women are better than men.” Jason Lau, the New South Wales resident who brought the case against the museum, did not appear in court — neither during the initial lawsuit nor during the appeal — and has never spoken publicly about it.