Gambler David Walsh takes a punt on a theatre of curios

Having acquired a fortune through a highly successful, but controversial gambling ring, David Walsh blew his winnings on a museum of the strange in his native Tasmania.

David Walsh, the arch-gambler they call the Tasmanian Devil, first made global headlines in 2009 when he took a macabre bet on the life expectancy of the French artist Christian Boltanski, says The New Yorker. Boltanski is still alive but, in an odd twist of events, Walsh has now found fame under a different guise. A bizarre gallery he has built in his hometown of Hobart has become such an international magnet that Walsh is credited not just with transforming Tasmania's ultra-staid reputation, but with beefing up its languishing economy. Lonely Planet listed Hobart as one of the world's top ten cities to visit in 2013 largely because of Walsh's Museum of Old and New Art (Mona).

Walsh built his theatre of curios (the collection is valued at $100m) mainly for personal gratification. "It's become a more serious endeavour than I intended it to be," he told The Australian. In fact, he only made his first acquisition a Yoruba palace door bought in South Africa for $18,000 because he couldn't take all his blackjack winnings out of the country in hard currency. It was a deceptively innocuous opener for what was to come.

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