A Visit to the Museum of Sex

Stags, Smokers and Blue Movies, one of several exhibits now on view at the Museum of Sex in New York City. Photo Courtesy of the Museum of Sex

New York City is home to a lot of museums centering on a wide range of topics. Since 2002, one of them, the Museum of Sex (or “MoSex,” in the same way that “MoMA” stands for New York’s Museum of Modern Art), 233 Fifth Avenue (at 27th Street), has been devoted to preserving and presenting “the history, evolution, and cultural significance of human sexuality.”

Readers of this column know that any visit to Chicago is enhanced by a visit to the Leather Archives & Museum. New York’s MoSex likewise would be a worthwhile, fascinating, and educational addition to any reader’s New York itinerary.

The outside of the museum consists of display windows that highlight current exhibits. On the inside, just past the lobby and reception area, is a museum shop fully stocked with, in the museum’s words, “an eclectic assortment of publications, home accents, clothing, and, of course, the best selection of sex toys available.” The museum currently has three galleries.

When I visited recently, Gallery 1 was devoted to Men Without Suits: Objectifying the Male Body (running through January 29). A timeline wrapping around two walls of the gallery gives a history of how the male body has been portrayed from ancient through modern times.

The rest of the gallery is concerned primarily with the history of male nude photography. The walls are hung with examples showing how photographic depiction of the male body changed from the advent of photography (naive and starkly honest); through the romantic/macho portrayals of early bodybuilders; to the closeted homoeroticism of the middle 20th Century, and the let-it-all-hang-out abandon of the sexual revolution.

Stags, Smokers & Blue Movies: The Origins of American Pornographic Film is presently on display in Gallery 2. Before DVDs, before Beta, before sex legally could be shown on screens in theaters, these were the forbidden films viewed in smoke-filled rooms (hence “smokers”) at clandestine male gatherings called stag parties (hence “stags”).

The gallery walls are dark. The tops of large black boxes on the floor are actually screens on which are projected 20 films made between 1915 and 1960. TV screens in booths along one wall show interviews with men who used to watch these films (and, in one instance, run the film projector).

Because the films themselves are silent, the gallery is filled instead with a sound track composed of whoops, cheers, and raucous comments that would have been made by groups of men watching the films.

Photograph of Arthur Harris circa 1952. From the Men Without Suits exhibit at the Museum of Sex in New York City. Collection of Jim Kempster and Bob Loncar. Photo by Al Urban, Courtesy of the Museum of Sex

Gallery 3 held several exhibits. Spotlight on the Permanent Collection includes a history of sex-education materials; a collection of antique condom packets; a male chastity appliance for use in asylums and institutions; and other assorted sex-related paraphernalia.

Another exhibit in Gallery 3 when I visited was Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews by Timothy Archibald. (The exhibit closed January 10.) I’ll tell you more about that exhibit, and the recently published book on which it was based—along with the local celebrity featured in both book and exhibit—in a future column.

MoSex currently has two fascinating on-line exhibits that are as near as your Web browser. US Patent Office Sex Inventions, dovetailing nicely with the Sex Machines exhibit, is a history and compendium of actual patents for various sexual appliances.

One of the most diabolical devices, an “Electric Spermatorrhea Shield,” intended to prevent masturbation, was to be used “until the...habit is mastered or overcome.” Many of the devices were intended to prevent erections, masturbation, and even nocturnal emissions.

Conversely, some devices were pre-Viagra attempts to induce erections. The exhibit includes various “marital aids” in the form of couches and slings. Two antirape devices, both worn in the vagina, promise to give any would-be rapist an unpleasant surprise.

MosSex’s other on-line exhibit (also an on-site installation in Gallery 3) is Mapping Sex in America. According to the Museum, the aim of this interactive exhibit is to create an “ongoing archive chronicling Americans’ stories of sexual practice and the evolution of America’s sexual customs.” Click on a map of the United States to post your personal sexual history, or read what other people have posted.

You can view the museum’s on-line exhibits, as well as details about its current gallery installations, upcoming special events, and other museum information, at www.museumofsex.com.