Since the acid-dropping experiments of therapists and sexual revolutionaries in the 1950s and 60s, sex and psychedelics have consistently been drawn together in Anglo-American and European culture, hailed as augmenters of experience, therapeutic tools, and even erotic interlocutors.

From the counterculture call to “turn on and tune in,” to the quest of the modern “psychonaut” for self-realization, psychoactive substances have been understood to transform body and mind. Yet, the drugs we now refer to as psychedelics have much more varied and complex historical intersections with sexuality than the standard story of Western sexual liberation might lead us to believe.

This exhibition draws on hidden histories and marginalized stories, oftentimes those of women, to illustrate how our understanding of sexuality in the 21st century has been transformed by the “altered states” brought about and inspired by psychedelic substances. In the wake of a major resurgence of psychedelic research, which has informed the loosening of legal prohibitions on psychedelics and an uptake in use, the time has come to tell new stories about the psychedelic future of sex.

Penny Slinger, Mother of Pearl (detail), 1976-77. Collage on Board. Courtesy of the artist/Juliana Huxtable, I know your little fast tail aint outside again, 2024. Acrylic, button and vinyl stickers on printed canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Project Native Informant, London/ Jon Shard, The Haçienda, ca. 1990. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist/OZ Magazine, no. 30, 1970, Museum of Sex Collection.