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Sex Museum to Open in NYC
10/04/02

Posted on 10/03/2002 10:07:25 PM PDT by kattracks

NEW YORK, Oct 03, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- 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 money 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, had the idea for the museum four years ago. He decided later to make it a purely private venture, worried that any help from public money would bring protest with 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."

---

On the Net:

Museum of Sex: http://www.museumofsex.com

Catholic League: http://www.catholicleague.org

By ERIN McCLAM Associated Press Writer

Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved




TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: New York
KEYWORDS:
No wonder slick wanted his office in NYC, he must be thrilled. I'll bet he's going to do the ribbon cutting honors.
1 posted on 10/03/2002 10:07:25 PM PDT by kattracks
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To: kattracks
I was thinking the same thing.
2 posted on 10/03/2002 10:12:25 PM PDT by BulletBrasDotNet
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To: kattracks
Just more demonic representation from the Democrats. The fact that there is a big hole downtown does not phase them, as long as they can publicly shock the public, and their children, with their depravity. Blood-spurting infant dismemberment- sexual depravity. It's all the same to them.
3 posted on 10/03/2002 10:16:29 PM PDT by Dec31,1999
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To: kattracks
They should hang his portrait in there, so they could say they have an image of the world's biggest pr*ck.
4 posted on 10/03/2002 10:18:33 PM PDT by Paul Atreides
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To: Dec31,1999
Why do I get the feeling that 99% of this museum will be composed of homosexual-themed images?
5 posted on 10/03/2002 10:19:32 PM PDT by Paul Atreides
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TAKE BACK THE SENATE!
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6 posted on 10/03/2002 10:20:05 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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To: Paul Atreides
Sexual activity and depiction thereof is supposed to be private. But that's not good enough for these demons.
7 posted on 10/03/2002 10:23:18 PM PDT by Dec31,1999
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To: kattracks
Why do public sex exhibitions always have to include leather, straps, bondage, etc?
8 posted on 10/03/2002 10:28:56 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
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To: Dec31,1999; Paul Atreides; BulletBrasDotNet; kattracks
The Museum of Sex to open in Manhattan - man spends decades cataloging his 100k porn collection More details there from last August, the guy with the massive porn collection is a bit of an interesting person (and he lives in Clinton, Maryland....)
9 posted on 10/03/2002 10:28:59 PM PDT by chance33_98
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To: kattracks
What? NYC has one first??? Come on, liberal Cali, we have to be next!! /sarc off..
10 posted on 10/03/2002 10:29:02 PM PDT by goodieD
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To: kattracks
Here are some choice quotes:

In 1976, his wife left him, taking their 2-year-old daughter. Whittington says he dealt with the pain of divorce by spending quality time with his porn collection. "It kept escalating," he says, "and when my wife left, it escalated some more."

Whittington's 85-year-old mother, May, who lives with him, is also thrilled.

11 posted on 10/03/2002 10:30:26 PM PDT by chance33_98
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To: goodieD
What? NYC has one first??? Come on, liberal Cali, we have to be next!!

I posted an article a few days ago about that very thing.

Homeless Sex Toys - More silliness from the land of fruits and nuts :)

12 posted on 10/03/2002 10:31:41 PM PDT by chance33_98
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To: Rye
Because, we live in an age where it is considered intelligent, innovative, talented, brilliant, etc. to shock people. Never mind that the person has no talent, whatsoever. Just the fact that the person can shock a group of people is enough to be deified, by the self-appointed arbitors of brilliance.
13 posted on 10/03/2002 10:38:39 PM PDT by Paul Atreides
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To: Paul Atreides
Because, we live in an age where it is considered intelligent, innovative, talented, brilliant, etc. to shock people.

Explains the votes gore got.

14 posted on 10/03/2002 11:05:15 PM PDT by chance33_98
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To: chance33_98
phew.. i was beginning to be worried this stupid state was getting lazy.
15 posted on 10/04/2002 9:23:51 AM PDT by goodieD
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To: kattracks
If you guys are getting your balls in a bind from this, move to Holland.

I lived in Rotterdam and there were S&M pictures in the subway station. There was a gay bar across from an elementary school. There was, of course, the famous red-light district.

No one seemed to care. It was ho-hum.
16 posted on 10/04/2002 9:30:14 AM PDT by jjm2111
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