Gallery Carre
Two posts/articles about the Museum of Sex
Oct 11th, 2007 by Viviane
(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.
That’s really true. M and I went to the very first exhibit when I first arrived in New York years ago, and it was an interesting survey of the history of sex in NYC, and captured something essential not only about sexuality, but about the flavor of New York. But the exhibits since then have felt less and less so. I like Katharine Gates, but this most recent exhibit seems to be a mile wide and about an inch deep; it catalogs a lot of different kinks, but doesn’t really explore the meaning of any of these fetishes, or what it means that our private sexualities are so different from our publicly-stated morals.
But it’s worse that there seems to be such a complete disconnect between the museum and the communities in the city. It feels kind of like they want to look at us from a distance, but can’t risk getting too close. I have little awareness of them taking part in or sponsoring any of the big community events, like Folsom East or LPN; in fact, they feel pretty much damn invisible unless you seek them out.