“While online porn may seem a world away from the brothel catalogs of long ago, the Museum of Sex’s latest show shows our appetite for porn is long—and inventive.”
— The Daily Beast
OVERVIEW
Credits
In our modern Internet Age, with thousands of explicit images available at the click of a button, the terms “hardcore” and “pornography” have become nearly synonymous. But while it is easy to imagine that “hardcore” is an invention of the 21st century, the desire to sexually break the boundaries of physical and social modesty has long revealed itself throughout history. Despite repeated attempts to censor, sequester or “sanitize” this sexual past, artifacts left from previous generations prove our ancestors were not as asexual as an expurgated version of history would like us to believe.
Though much has been lost or discarded, many private collections were kept hidden and secretly traded. Highlights of the exhibition include: a 1855 New York City Brothel Guide; a hand illustrated sex manual from the late nineteenth century; turn of the century photographs featuring interracial sex, group sex, same sex encounters and sex toys use; early stag films; a late twentieth century “glory hole”; as well as a collection of erotic artifacts hidden for nearly a century in the brickwork of a recently renovated Brooklyn brownstone.
PRIMARY CONTENT ADVISOR
Lisa Z. Sigel, Ph.D.
Professor of History, Department of History, DePaul University
Author of Governing Pleasures and Making Modern Love
ADVISORS
Dr. Sarah Bull
Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, University of Cambridge
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Aimee Burnham, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of History, University of Warwick
Dr. Colette Colligan
Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University
Hal Gladfelder
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
English, American Studies and Creative Writing School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
University of Manchester
Ian Littlewood
Author of Sultry Climates: Travel and Sex since the Grand Tour
Kathleen Lubey, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, English, St. John’s University
Joseph W. Slade, Ph. D.
Professor of Media Arts and Studies, Ohio University
Whitney Strub
Associate Professor and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University-Newark
Jennifer Tyburczy, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
LENDERS
Bridgeman Art Library
Nidal Jelahej
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction
