The Museum of Sex

May 23, 2002 11:11 PM

The Museum of Sex... coming soon to Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, its first exhibition to be NYC Sex: How NYC Transformed Sex in America, including many items from private collections that have never been shown anywhere else. {more inside}
posted by dhartung (6 comments total)

From the exhibition introduction:
New York City was the locale for many of the most critical events in the history of Sexuality in America. Many New Yorkers were thrust into the headlines -- and into history -- either by chance or design. But New York's role in transforming American attitudes about Sex was just as much the result of everyday rebellions in the quieter lives of people anonymous to history.... Delving into the histories of prostitution, burlesque, birth control, obscenity, fetish and more, the inaugural exhibition of The Museum of Sex, NYC Sex includes never-before exhibited selections from public and private collections, including materials once confiscated and classified as obscene. These primary sources of social history -- letters, photographs, films and newspapers -- reveal how it has been possible in New York, more than in any other American city, to form communities around Sex and Sexuality.

Perhaps just as interestingly, the location of the museum -- at Fifth Avenue and 27th -- is approximately (I think it's across the street) that of the original Madison Square Garden, the site of the Stanford White murder in 1906, a nationwide sex scandal on the order of OJ or Monica.
posted by dhartung at 11:17 PM on May 23, 2002

Front page has interesting and/or annoying javascript navigation.

Also, includes 1001 Nights in Manhattan, a flash-based "NY Sex Stories" site that uses map-based navigation to locate the stories. So far, there's only one desultory entry.
posted by dhartung at 11:27 PM on May 23, 2002

More: It's a new building, with flowing organic architecture, something like Gehry's designs.
posted by dhartung at 12:47 AM on May 24, 2002

Oh oh, it looks like they forgot how to control the scrollbars on that page. The animation could have been a lot smoother too, but otherwise I like the idea of that crazy navigation :)
posted by Icestorm at 2:28 AM on May 24, 2002

Hey! That site was designed by Entropy8 and Zuper anybody remember them? Old school arty webheads. Good to see they're still in the biz of experimentation.
posted by jeremias at 5:17 AM on May 24, 2002

That was very interesting... I was surprised to learn about the Sloan House YMCA, which not only was a gay hangout from 30's to the 50's (according to the site) but also the unofficial dorm for the art school I attended in the 80's.
posted by crunchland at 5:48 AM on May 24, 2002