[Caught in the Net] Night at the (Sex) Museum
I believe strongly in the importance of education, and one of the best ways to learn about our human cultural heritage is through museums, be they museums of art, museums of technology, museums of natural history . . . or museums of sex. There are more museums dedicated to the art and science of human fucking than you might think, and here’s a brief virtual tour:
First, of course, there’s the Museum of Sex in New York, pretty much the flagship of such places, at least in the United States. Founded in 2005, it definitely tends toward the classy/educational/restrained end of the spectrum, with current exhibitions on “Sex in Design/Design in Sex” and “Action: Sex and the Moving Image,” as well as the permanent collection, which includes assorted homemade and commercial sexual “contraptions,” from the Monkey Rocker to the Real Doll. The museum focuses on eight themes: “sex education; mapping sex in America; sex in art; law and public morality; sex in advertising; sex and technology; sex and entertainment,” and (rather self-aggrandizingly), “the significance of the Museum of Sex in New York City.”
Things get stranger when you move a bit farther afield. Consider the Icelandic Phallological Museum, dedicated to the preservation and presentation of dicks of all kinds. “Visitors to the museum will encounter thirty specimens belonging to twelve different kinds of whale, one specimen taken from a rogue polar bear, eighteen specimens belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus, and fifty one specimens originating from sixteen different kinds of land mammal: all in all, a total of one hundred specimens belonging to thirty six different kinds of mammal.” It’s penis-tastic! The museum has also secured promises from several men to donate their penises after death. Well, like the saying goes, you can’t take it with you . . .
There are Japanese sex museums that are rather more venerable than either of the above. The first Hihokan, or “House of Hidden Treasures,” appeared in 1971, and originally included only “phallic/vulvic altar symbols and intercourse themed antiques” of the sort you could find in many Shinto shrines. Gradually, though, founder Masato Matsuno (or “Professor Sex”) expanded his collection to include some pretty wild stuff. Nowadays there are lots of other Hihokan scattered around Japan, especially in resort towns. Take a visual tour of the original museum here. Why did I never get to take field trips to places like this in Junior High? Stupid Planetarium.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 21 May 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Caught in the Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 5:30 am Chris Davis wrote:
There are four men who have promised their penis to the museum in Iceland. One is an American, and I know him! I’ve seen the penis and testicles he’s donated to the Iceland Penis Museum, and they’re quite large and hefty. His penis, named Elmo, has a tattoo on his head, and that will be re-done in the next couple of weeks, before the penis and balls are cut off.
Yeah, that’s right. The American donor with the big dick named Elmo isn’t waiting until he passes. He’s actually having surgery so his specimen can be plastinated and put on display. And he’s doing that real soon.
Elmo will look great there, though. Probably a good thing to do, all considered.
on Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 6:04 am StarChaser Tyger wrote:
The Hihokan link is broken; there’s a rogue space in one tag. http://www.juergenspecht.com/documentations/7/overview6/
on Thursday, 22 May 2008 at 11:40 am Blowfishies wrote:
Link fixed! Thanks!