Sex Museum Opening

[bigpoppanils]

(1010 WINS)-The director of the newest museum in this culture-packed city is surveying the prizes of his permanent collection -- leather straps, condom boxes, video porn playing on large screens.

He stops and points at a 1940s Wonder Woman comic book cover. "Just look at her," Daniel Gluck says. "The cinched waist, the high heels, the rope. ... She's always tying people up."

Wonder Woman is among the tamer attractions at the Museum of Sex, which opens this weekend in Manhattan and aims to catalog American sexuality, from 19th-century brothels to turn-of-the-millennium sex parties.

In a city that has affectionately shortened the names of its culture hubs -- MoMA, the Met -- the new museum has already been dubbed MoSex. And it has stirred opposition from those who say it is merely a celebration of smut.

The state rejected an early attempt by Gluck to create a tax-sheltered foundation to support the museum.

And William Donohue, head of the 350,000-member Catholic League, attacked the museum weeks before its opening, suggesting it should include a death chamber to mark the "wretched diseases" caused by promiscuity.

"They can talk all they want about the scholarly veneer on this," said Louis Giovino, a Catholic League spokesman. "So it's historical. That makes it quaint? It's porn."

To museum officials, though, the collection tells a fascinating story of evolving sexual subcultures and their unending war with each generation's vice patrols. They contend the museum is a venture of history, even art.

Patrons, who must be 18, can walk through a sexual timeline of sorts covering nearly 200 years.

There is a touch-screen guide to the sex parlors that sprouted downtown in the early 1800s. Eugen Sandow, a musclebound curiosity of the 1890s who charged women to feel his biceps, flexes on a black-and-white video.

In the 20th-century galleries, pornography flourishes on the museum's walls, from a Charlie Chaplin-style silent film to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction to porn idols of the 1980s and 1990s. One picture from the 1960s advertises a self-whipping machine for women.

The museum pays considerable attention to police activities, such as raids on gay bathhouses and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's push to rid Times Square of triple-X adult shops.

"The vice squads here were very effective," said Grady T. Turner, who left the New-York Historical Society to become executive curator. "That has always created a very interesting dynamic between mainstream culture and subculture."

All this is housed on the corner of 27th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, next to a row of banks and across the street from a dinnerware store. The museum's windows are painted solid white, and Gluck said he plans to keep them that way.

Museum officials said they give fair treatment to all aspects of sex, presenting facts and not taking sides on sexual debates. One display recounts the explosion of AIDS in the 1980s, and another shows crude, early abortion tools.

Gluck, 34, a former painter, sculptor and computer entrepreneur, had the idea for the museum four years ago. He decided later to make the museum a purely private venture, worried that any help from public money would lead to a storm of protest accompanying each new exhibit.

The museum's first exhibition, debuting Saturday, is an examination of how New York City changed sex in America. It includes maps of "sexually significant" Manhattan sites -- such as the location of the country's first condom store and locales where couples have had public sex -- and invites visitors to share their stories.

Gluck said he has ideas for other exhibits, some hardly risque at all. One, he said, may take a closer look at Chinese erotic foot-binding.

Visitors to the Museum of Sex will be charged $17, a bit steep even by New York museum standards. Discount plans for frequent patrons will be offered. And Gluck promises a gift shop -- nothing too racy, mostly books and T-shirts.

Whether all that will be enough to keep MoSex afloat remains to be seen.

Noting the peep shows still in Times Square, the Catholic League's Giovino said: "It'll be interesting to find out if anyone wants to pay $17 when they can get the same thing for a quarter on Eighth Avenue."

[phuturephunk]

bigpoppanils ist ein frecher frecher Junge. Ich gehe über sein Haus hinaus und bewerfe ihn mit Hamstern und lemmings!

[bigpoppanils]

Originally posted by phuturephunk

bigpoppanils ist ein frecher frecher Junge. Ich gehe über sein Haus hinaus und bewerfe ihn mit Hamstern und lemmings!

Phuturephunk belästigt kleine Jungen und faßt guidos für ein Leben ein

[quoth]

Originally posted by bigpoppanils

(1010 WINS)-The director of the newest museum in this culture-packed city is surveying the prizes of his permanent collection -- leather straps, condom boxes, video porn playing on large screens.

He stops and points at a 1940s Wonder Woman comic book cover. "Just look at her," Daniel Gluck says. "The cinched waist, the high heels, the rope. ... She's always tying people up."

Wonder Woman is among the tamer attractions at the Museum of Sex, which opens this weekend in Manhattan and aims to catalog American sexuality, from 19th-century brothels to turn-of-the-millennium sex parties.

In a city that has affectionately shortened the names of its culture hubs -- MoMA, the Met -- the new museum has already been dubbed MoSex. And it has stirred opposition from those who say it is merely a celebration of smut.

The state rejected an early attempt by Gluck to create a tax-sheltered foundation to support the museum.

And William Donohue, head of the 350,000-member Catholic League, attacked the museum weeks before its opening, suggesting it should include a death chamber to mark the "wretched diseases" caused by promiscuity.

"They can talk all they want about the scholarly veneer on this," said Louis Giovino, a Catholic League spokesman. "So it's historical. That makes it quaint? It's porn."

To museum officials, though, the collection tells a fascinating story of evolving sexual subcultures and their unending war with each generation's vice patrols. They contend the museum is a venture of history, even art.

Patrons, who must be 18, can walk through a sexual timeline of sorts covering nearly 200 years.

There is a touch-screen guide to the sex parlors that sprouted downtown in the early 1800s. Eugen Sandow, a musclebound curiosity of the 1890s who charged women to feel his biceps, flexes on a black-and-white video.

In the 20th-century galleries, pornography flourishes on the museum's walls, from a Charlie Chaplin-style silent film to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction to porn idols of the 1980s and 1990s. One picture from the 1960s advertises a self-whipping machine for women.

The museum pays considerable attention to police activities, such as raids on gay bathhouses and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's push to rid Times Square of triple-X adult shops.

"The vice squads here were very effective," said Grady T. Turner, who left the New-York Historical Society to become executive curator. "That has always created a very interesting dynamic between mainstream culture and subculture."

All this is housed on the corner of 27th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, next to a row of banks and across the street from a dinnerware store. The museum's windows are painted solid white, and Gluck said he plans to keep them that way.

Museum officials said they give fair treatment to all aspects of sex, presenting facts and not taking sides on sexual debates. One display recounts the explosion of AIDS in the 1980s, and another shows crude, early abortion tools.

Gluck, 34, a former painter, sculptor and computer entrepreneur, had the idea for the museum four years ago. He decided later to make the museum a purely private venture, worried that any help from public money would lead to a storm of protest accompanying each new exhibit.

The museum's first exhibition, debuting Saturday, is an examination of how New York City changed sex in America. It includes maps of "sexually significant" Manhattan sites -- such as the location of the country's first condom store and locales where couples have had public sex -- and invites visitors to share their stories.

Gluck said he has ideas for other exhibits, some hardly risque at all. One, he said, may take a closer look at Chinese erotic foot-binding.

Visitors to the Museum of Sex will be charged $17, a bit steep even by New York museum standards. Discount plans for frequent patrons will be offered. And Gluck promises a gift shop -- nothing too racy, mostly books and T-shirts.

Whether all that will be enough to keep MoSex afloat remains to be seen.

Noting the peep shows still in Times Square, the Catholic League's Giovino said: "It'll be interesting to find out if anyone wants to pay $17 when they can get the same thing for a quarter on Eighth Avenue."

yea..im going there today. My friend is a photographer for the exhibit and she is bringing me along.

Should be innnnnnnnnnnnnteresting.

[georgym]

Originally posted by quoth

yea..im going there today. My friend is a photographer for the exhibit and she is bringing me along.

Should be innnnnnnnnnnnnteresting.

You should show her your <photochop> skillz, and maybe they'll let you have your own exibit