S-E-X
Have I got your attention?
When I first heard about the Museum of Sex in Manhattan, I was uninterested. After all, we've been to a sex museum in Amsterdam, and hell, if you're gonna go to a sex museum, Amsterdam is sort of the pinnacle. But our visit yesterday was a pleasant surprise.
Unlike the random collection of pornographic sculpture and sex toys we saw in Amsterdam, "MoSex" has a strong research and activism bent. Sure, there was a room full of porn movies, and another of pinups, manga, and French postcards, but there was also an extensive exhibit on the history of condoms, which segued into a history of VD prevention, and finally fetched up with modern day contraceptive controversy. Admittedly, some of the porn commentary was slightly absurd in its high-brow vocabulary (the phrase "cinematic gaze" cropped up), but on the whole, this was a collection aimed at education more than titillation.
The highlight of the place (and we almost missed it, due to confusing signage) was a display on the sex lives of animals. Again, not the snicker-fest that the title would lead you to believe--this was a serious natural history exhibit. With the intent to disprove the popular notion that such things as homosexuality, transgenderism, group sex, polyamory, etc, are justly to be condemned as "unnatural," the exhibit presents examples of all that, and more (and some things you wouldn't believe), all occurring in nature. (I mean, I knew dolphins had threesomes, but blow-hole sex?)
The gift shop at this place was something else again: books, postcards, 23 flavors of condom and lube, sexually themed "objets d'art," and a bewildering collection of sex toys, all displayed on white spot-lit shelves. The atmosphere, rather than the seediness of a 42nd Street porn shop or the cozy homey-ness of San Francisco's Good Vibrations (don't ask me how I know), was more the sleek, high-tech gloss of the Apple Store. The employees even wore black tee-shirts with white lettering.
The only thing that didn't leave me impressed with MoSex was the slightly haphazard arrangement of the exhibits, which was probably partially due to the quirky shape of the space. When you've got four narrow floors of an old New York warehouse to work with, you can't always lay out displays in a linear order, which meant sometimes you walked into a room and found the introductory text for its exhibits behind you, or around a corner. The unforgivable part was the constant barrage of misspellings and bad punctuation in the text. After the fourth misplaced apostrophe, I wanted to walk around the place with a red Sharpie.
Apostrophes and commas aside, though, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this place. If you like your sex sleek, high-brow, and zoological, go check out MoSex. Just don't forget your red Sharpie.
When I first heard about the Museum of Sex in Manhattan, I was uninterested. After all, we've been to a sex museum in Amsterdam, and hell, if you're gonna go to a sex museum, Amsterdam is sort of the pinnacle. But our visit yesterday was a pleasant surprise.
Unlike the random collection of pornographic sculpture and sex toys we saw in Amsterdam, "MoSex" has a strong research and activism bent. Sure, there was a room full of porn movies, and another of pinups, manga, and French postcards, but there was also an extensive exhibit on the history of condoms, which segued into a history of VD prevention, and finally fetched up with modern day contraceptive controversy. Admittedly, some of the porn commentary was slightly absurd in its high-brow vocabulary (the phrase "cinematic gaze" cropped up), but on the whole, this was a collection aimed at education more than titillation.
The highlight of the place (and we almost missed it, due to confusing signage) was a display on the sex lives of animals. Again, not the snicker-fest that the title would lead you to believe--this was a serious natural history exhibit. With the intent to disprove the popular notion that such things as homosexuality, transgenderism, group sex, polyamory, etc, are justly to be condemned as "unnatural," the exhibit presents examples of all that, and more (and some things you wouldn't believe), all occurring in nature. (I mean, I knew dolphins had threesomes, but blow-hole sex?)
The gift shop at this place was something else again: books, postcards, 23 flavors of condom and lube, sexually themed "objets d'art," and a bewildering collection of sex toys, all displayed on white spot-lit shelves. The atmosphere, rather than the seediness of a 42nd Street porn shop or the cozy homey-ness of San Francisco's Good Vibrations (don't ask me how I know), was more the sleek, high-tech gloss of the Apple Store. The employees even wore black tee-shirts with white lettering.
The only thing that didn't leave me impressed with MoSex was the slightly haphazard arrangement of the exhibits, which was probably partially due to the quirky shape of the space. When you've got four narrow floors of an old New York warehouse to work with, you can't always lay out displays in a linear order, which meant sometimes you walked into a room and found the introductory text for its exhibits behind you, or around a corner. The unforgivable part was the constant barrage of misspellings and bad punctuation in the text. After the fourth misplaced apostrophe, I wanted to walk around the place with a red Sharpie.
Apostrophes and commas aside, though, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this place. If you like your sex sleek, high-brow, and zoological, go check out MoSex. Just don't forget your red Sharpie.