David Walsh, the founder of the Museum of Old and New Art – better known as MONA – will require staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19, making the Hobart museum the first major cultural institution in the country to mandate jabs for employees.

Echoing Russian novelist and philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s declaration that “a society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity,” Walsh announced the decision in a blog post on Thursday.