MoSex, the Museum of Sex, the first museum of its kind in the US, opened in Manhattan on September 28. The museum is trying to make the study of sex a serious scholarly pursuit. Although it is not a queer museum per se, most of the museum focuses on gay and lesbian content.

Its first exhibit, ‘NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America’, chronicles, in the parlance of the museum, ’sexual subcultures’ ranging from a display of ‘homemade’ strap-on harnesses from the early 1900s to photographs of a lesbian football team that played in the 1930s. This museum, which was founded by a 34-year-old software entrepreneur Daniel Gluck, feels like a sexy SoHo art gallery: gorgeous loft space with minimalist lighting and inviting red velvet sofas that are styled as pairs of lush lips.

Unfortunately, that is where the ’sexy’ ends. Grady Turner, the executive curator, was quoted in The New York Times stating that the museum is not ‘about a lot of pretty white women having sex’, which is kind of too bad because a lot of pretty women (of all races) having sex can be a good thing. Tanya Bezreh, who worked on the NYC Sex exhibit, said that ‘the focus of the museum is too “get over” having sex as a taboo, titillating topic and to present sex in a sober light’. The museum only exhibits items that are defined as ‘historically significant’, implying that the curator knows something is ‘historically significant’ when he sees it.

Although the museum presents erotic art that in a different setting would be, well, hot, the overall problem the museum has is that taking sexual objects out of context and containing them under glass in a sober, hyper-organized museum environment makes the exhibit as thrilling as a stamp collection.

Berzeh pointed out that ‘the museum is, in fact, fairly conservative, for example, it cannot take money from anyone affiliated with the adult entertainment business… and because it is relying on mainstream corporate sponsorship it can’t take risks that an art gallery could’. Ironically, Berzeh said that she hoped that since the museum presents historical porn such as an erotic cartoon from the 1930s as legitimate as a Warhol painting, more women will take porn seriously and porn as a genre will broadcast very different messages in order to have a female audience.

The museum, however, plays it too safe by opting for the exhibition of items that may have titillated your great-grandma during the Great Depression. The visitor is left wondering how the 1970s could be missing from an exhibit which is about how NYC sex practices changed American sex?

Not only are the 1970s basically absent, there simply is not any substantive content from the last 30 years other than a pencil sketch of a Tom of Finland model heartily engaged in self-fellatio. Tristan Taormino, the Village Voice sex columnist and lesbian provocateur, noted that ‘it is more interesting what things the museum will not show than what it will show’.

Perhaps because of former Mayor Giuliani’s campaign against adult entertainment businesses in Manhattan, the museum does not have as provocative content as most modern art museums and galleries. Bizarrely, the exhibit misses even a cursory mention of Giuliani’s campaign against vice in New York (placing Giuliani in the exhibit’s section on Anthony Comstock’s crusade against vice in 1870s New York that culminated in the passage of a federal anti-obscenity law might provide for important insights into the American mania for censoring sexual content).

A notable exception to the generally tepid content is ‘Bathroom Kiss’, a sensual photograph by Barbara Nitke, that uncannily captures the degree of trust between a young lesbian couple in a s/m scene. In ‘Bathroom Kiss’ the ’slave’ is obediently sitting on the toilet with her hands tied while her lover, who is above her, leans in to kiss her. Nitke, who is influenced by Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, uses the flash point process to give a gauzy, dream like quality to her photographs.

Predictably, there will be those who think the museum shows too much and legitimizes the objectification of women. To this critique, Taormino while rolling her eyes responded that ’sexism in the sex industry is not more pronounced than other industries such as the fashion industry. And it is important to see and acknowledge the sexism inherent in our culture, which just happens to be particularly visible in mainstream pornography’.

The museum successfully exhibits how the boundaries of pornography have shifted wildly over the last two centuries. Craig Wilder, a history professor at Dartmouth College who was an advisor to the museum, quipped that ‘historically porn has been “all action and no talk”, and hopefully this museum will make people start talking more openly and intelligently about sex.’

The Museum of Sex is located at 233 Fifth Avenue in New York. Admission is $17.00.
All visitors must be 18 or older.
www.museumofsex.com

Article source: http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2002-11/museumofsex.htm