NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America. The inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Sex, 233 Fifth Avenue, New York City www.museumofsex.com/
Rating: ★★★
My friend said that she was “sexed out,” in the way that Americans say “maxed out” when they've reached the limit on their credit cards. After two hours at the new Museum of Sex in New York we were tired. Sex, sex, sex—anyway, anyhow, multiple, on top, underneath, with friends, with men, with women, with three, with four, banned, censored, published, not published, in graceful 19th century prints and grainy 20th century stag films, or groaning blues—can become boring.
This establishment is trying to be a serious museum. The entrance fee is $17 (£11/€17.40), $7 higher than the Metropolitan Museum, which offers Rembrandts, Vermeers, Titians, Impressionists, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, French furniture . . . your feet will hurt, but at least the Met has restaurants. On the other hand, the Museum of Sex's entrance fee includes an audio device giving information about exhibits. There are crowds, mostly heterosexual young couples, including some British tourists, and queues at weekends.
This inaugural exhibition at this museum suggests that sex began in New York in 1836, although you might have suspected earlier origins. “NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America” explains how this wicked town offered freedom to Americans from what my friend calls “those rectangular states” and was also full of decadent Europeans, now called Eurotrash.
In 1836 Helen Jewett, a high class prostitute, was murdered. James Gordon Bennett, founder of what is today's International Herald Tribune, knew a story when he saw one and covered it in titillating detail. Period tourist guides rated houses of prostitution in the same way that restaurants are rated today. Anatomical museums (from which women were banned) showed subjects of prurient interest, such as syphilitic destruction of nasal bones. Remedies for sexually transmitted diseases were sold by mail order.
Medical folk will be interested in abortion instruments, made in Paris in the mid 19th century, and Madame Restell, abortionist to the rich, who committed suicide after legal charges. Other exhibits show Margaret Sanger, the family planning pioneer who was jailed for her work; anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, who railed against contraception; and Julius Schmid, who developed and promoted condoms.
Sex and entertainment mingled in risqué shows and films. Warnings about “white slavery” were common. So were advertisements for muscular and sexually attractive men and women—Eugen Sandow and “Little Egypt,” a belly dancer. Mae West was arrested and jailed for her sexy plays in 1928 (the publicity was fabulous). Art and artefacts show homosexuality, cheesecake and beefcake art (sexy women and men), sado-masochism (sample equipment), and society's changing attitudes. In 1952, tabloid headlines announced “Ex GI Becomes a Blonde Beauty,” when George Jorgensen underwent sex change surgery in Denmark and became Christine Jorgensen.
The golden age of porn followed in the 1960s and 1970s, the days of the film Deep Throat, of Playboy clubs and Playgirl waitresses in bunny suits (there's one in the show), and of explicit sexual films (clips are shown). Then in 1981 there was AIDS, and the age of sexual freedom ended.
The museum is educational: why did we punish our friends and neighbours for their preferences and deny our own sexuality? Alas, the rich history of sex among our ancestors—how else did we get here?—is ignored. There is nothing about hetairai (concubines in ancient Greece), medieval mixed-sex baths, or sexual manuals like the Kama Sutra, and nothing like the directions to a brothel that I saw in the ruins of Ephesus—an erect penis pointing the way. Perhaps these will feature in the next exhibition.
Figure.
THE LESBIAN HERSTORY ARCHIVES
Football team from the Howdy Club, a lesbian bar in the 1930s and 1940s
Figure.
THE KINSEY INSTITUTE
Mae West was jailed for her sexy plays