New York City’s sexual subcultures will have an official address on Saturday when the first Museum of Sex opens its doors to the curious, the voyeurs, the scholars and those who want to educate themselves of centuries of sexual underworld.
Located at 233 Fifth Avenue in downtown Manhattan, but precisely 167 metres away from any churches and schools, the museum known as ”MoSex,” is already dubbed as ”MoSmut” by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
With five years in the making, MoSex wants to be an educational institution, but the city’s Board of Regents, which regulates schools and cultural groups, declined to grant it the title a cultural, non-profit organisation.
So its promoters want to operate it as a for-profit corporation, charging $17 per customer as an entrance fee to the five-storey museum. They hope to recuperate the millions of dollars they poured into rebuilding the building on Fifth Avenue, which was a former brothel with a history dating back to the 19th century.
The show is called ”NYC Sex: How New York City transformed sex in America.”
Back in 1883, news reports alleged that a Julius Schmidt, a paralytic immigrant from Germany, opened at the site a small industry using sausage casings to make the first condoms. He sold them under the name Ramses.
Helen Jewett, a 23-year-old prostitute was murdered there in 1836.
One of MoSex promoters, Daniel Gluck, told a media preview that New York City is ”a city bold enough, big enough, bad enough to have a sexual history unlike that of any other other.”
But Gluck is constrained by laws that rule out individual financial backing for adult entertainment. He denied MoSex is an X-rated show, saying the museum is to educate about the rampant sexual subcultures.
The New York Times, which had a first glimpse of the show, has reported that exhibits go back to the history of gay communities on Bowery Street in the 1800s and the crusade against brothels and the pornographic trade at that time. The crusaders are credited for documenting the city’s underworld of sex, abortionists, gays and lesbians and their literatures, which are being used today by scholars and MoSex.
The show features also more modern sex promoters: pinup king Irving Klaw, G-string king Charles Guyetter, fetishist models Bettie Page and Marie Jarroff, sex-change pioneer Christine Jorgensen, and pornography film stars like Linda Lovelave and Annie Sprinkle.
”Wonder Woman, a rival of Superman in movies for doing good deeds, is also found in the show. The reason? ”She was always tying people up and spanking someone,” said a promoter.
MoSex also contains a library of sex-oriented novels, some of them from DH Lawrence, and small booklets of pornographic cartoons. Films include from the early stag movies to ”Deep Throat” in the 1960s.
The show ends with the HIV/Aids epidemic and how it has changed society. In between the floors, customers can browse through gift shops, books and computerised documents – but no sex accoutrements. – Sapa-DPA