- Title: USA: NEW YORK CITY SEES ITS FIRST SEX MUSEUM OPEN
- Date: 25th September 2002
- Summary: PHOTOS FROM 1920's OF EROTIC DANCERS PHOTO OF THREE NAKED WOMEN BONDAGE DISPLAY PHOTO OF WOMAN TIED UP
- Embargoed: 10th October 2002 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVAD83W0OH2KGVLVQ3EEZPBEVW45
- Story Text: There's always been plenty of sexual expression in New York City - now it is being encapsulated in America's first sex museum.
There are plenty of museums in New York City and there's always been plenty of sex - but now the two have combined to produce the first sex museum in the United States.
The Museum of Sex presents its first exhibition "NYCSEX"
on Saturday, a candid look at "how New York City transformed sex in America". It dives into the city's sexual subcultures, ranging from naughty vaudeville acts in the 1920's to crudely shot spanking movies of the 1940's right up to explicit gay sex photos of the modern day.
It explores New York's histories of prostitution, burlesque, birth control and obscenity, aiming to chart the city's unique position in shaping America's sexual way of life.
While many snigger and snicker at the mention of a sex museum, curator Grady Turner says there is a more serious side the exploration in titillation.
Turner said, "I think that there is no way that someone would walk in and out of this museum and not see a picture that they find personally exciting, that's perfectly fine for us. We don't necessarily seek to titillate in this museum, it's just that we do show material that is exciting and with so many different orientations, it is entirely possible to get physically excited and as I said, that's great. But the main goal for us is to see how this kind of material can be used because if you are looking at a scene of an orgy in Harlem in the 1930's that could be sexually exciting but for us it is more interesting that it documents a scene."
There are court documents detailing a 1903 raid on a homosexual orgy, cheeky drawings of pert young women being spanked and cartoons depicting famous movie stars having sex.
Compared with Amsterdam's sex museum, New York's offering is tame, but it is still causing a local stir, with much interest in the newcomer museum. While sex museums are old hat across Europe and in Asia (there's even one in China which periodically gets closed down) the Museum of Sex is America's first. A fact that fascinates Dr June Reinisch, senior consultant, who wonders why it took so long. She believes it says a lot about America's deep rooted puritanical nature.
"America is still, eventhough you see it all around you what looks like sexuality, very conservative sexually," said Reinisch.
Still, there are things to be learnt from the Museum of Sex, like where the leather fetish scene came from in America.
Contrary to popular belief that butch gay men in the 1970's started the craze, Grady Turner says actually the leather fetish came from Europe just before World War II - an export from Germany's underground sex scene crushed by Hitler.
Turner explains, "The original S&M fetish scene in America was here in New York was heterosexual and began in the 1930's.
It began largely for the same reason modern art began here, surrealism was happening in Europe and when the Nazi's clamped down surrealists came to New York, same thing happened with S&M fetish, people who were on this emerging scene in Germany and Paris found themselves drawn to New York City where they found other people like themselves and they created this new social network here."
The Museum of Sex, known locally as MoSEX, a tongue in cheek reference to the Museum of Modern Art's moniker MOMA, opens it's doors to the public on Saturday. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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