$2 million Wu-Tang Clan album to make public debut in Tasmanian museum
The rare Wu-Tang Clan album infamously bought by “pharma bro” Martin Shrekli for $2 million in 2015 will be publicly presented for the first time next month.
Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania will hold limited-space, ticketed listening events for ‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin‘ during its Namedropping exhibition from 15th June through the 24th.
The one-off album is on loan to MONA by the NFT collectors PleasrDAO, HipHopDX reports, the crypto group who bought the LP from the US government for $4 million in 2021, after the government acquired it when Shrekli was indebted to the government from his 2018 fraud trial and sentencing (he was released from prison in 2022). The US government shared the first-ever images of the record via a 2022 Freedom of Information Act request.
“‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’ is more than just an album, so when I was thinking about status, and what a transcendent namedrop could be, I knew I had to get it into this exhibition”, MONA director Jarrod Rawlins told HipHopDX.
Tickets to the Wu-Tang listening sessions will be available from Thursday, 30th May, 10 AM local time (UTC/GMT +10) via MONA’s website. The wider Namedropping exhibition will run from 15th June through 21st April, 2025.
Wu-Tang Clan are in the midst of their 2024 Las Vegas residency, which has recently added September dates. In November last year, the legendary group was honoured with the declaration that 9th November is officially “Wu-Tang Day” in their native New York City.
Key Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killah released his latest solo album, ‘Set The Tone‘, earlier this month, as well as a memoir titled Rise Of A Killah: My Life In The Wu-Tang.
