(Photo: Michael Nagle for The New York Times)
New York Times cultural critic Edward Rothstein has a lengthy exhibition review of the ‘Kink’ show:
What seems needed, in fact, is for the museum to evolve from being a bit like a fetish into something more like a kink. Right now it seems an end in itself — a place where you can gawk at practices and objects that offer titillation and sensation, replacing familiar reality with another. If it were more like a kink, it would do more to enhance perceptions of the world beyond its walls, offering more vigorous interpretations of its objects, and provide a weird window through which this powerful and mysterious aspect of human experience might be better understood.
Audacia Ray, who helped open MoSex, reflects on the 5th anniversary of the Museum:
In San Francisco, despite it’s consistent problems with acquiring and securing space, the Center for Sex and Culture is truly at the center of things. Founders Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence are active members and supporters of a vast array of sexual communities. The Museum of Sex does has no such people and does no such thing, and that’s pretty sad, a lost opportunity. Though I’m no longer waging bets about how long the museum will continue to keep its doors open (I did, once upon a time, make bets like that), I do think it’s a serious bummer that the museum hasn’t made more of an effort to integrate itself into the various communities in New York, and furthermore, that communities built around sexuality in NYC don’t see the museum as an immediate ally and first choice as a venue or support organization for various endeavors. That in itself says volumes about the museum’s place in the sexual landscape of this city.
Gallery Carre
