Mention the word “sex” in America and odds are the word “president” will soon follow. But in Europe the word “sex” is just as likely to be followed by the word “museum.”
Rather quietly over the past several years, Europe has seen a blossoming of museums devoted to a subject that would send American curators ducking for cover. From Barcelona to Copenhagen these museums have enshrined everything from ancient fertility icons to contemporary interactive sculpture and sex toys.
And these museums have quickly become major attractions. In booming Berlin, for example, the Beate Uhse Erotik Museum attracts a quarter of a million visitors annually and is one of the five most-visited museums in the city, according to Bernd Buhmann, head of the press and public relations department of Berlin Tourismus.
We visited six erotic museums in four cities — Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and Paris — and gathered information on those in Barcelona and Copenhagen. These sites vary dramatically in presentation and content, ranging from a fun-house atmosphere to more dignified settings apropos of serious collections. Some were attached to tacky sex toy shops, others to elegant bookstores. Yet all are worth visiting; the objects they hold provide insight into the times and places they were created and appreciated.
In approximate order of seriousness, with most serious first, this is what we found.
Hamburg
Erotic Art Museum/Privart Museum
The St. Pauli district of Germany’s second city is its poorest, and its main drag, the Reeperbahn, definitely has a seaport feel. Our instant joke was calling it the grim Reeperbahn, but right there, in the thick of it, rise the five floors of Claus Becker’s magnificent Erotic Art Museum.
What was once a hat factory has morphed into a seductive, streamlined four-story receptacle of glass and light — a perfect setting for what is probably Europe’s most comprehensive collection of publicly displayed erotic paintings, lithographs and drawings.
The museum’s roots go back to 1990 when Becker, a real estate developer, purchased an enormous collection of erotic art from the Renaissance to the present that belonged to an “anonymous banker.” Feeling that erotic art has been either ignored or destroyed — and most certainly withheld from public view — Becker bought the collection and installed it in a beautifully rehabbed warehouse in St. Pauli.
With the collection continuing to expand, Becker moved to a new location on the Reeperbahn last year, keeping the original site as the Privart Museum, a modern art gallery devoted to revolving displays of contemporary erotic and other works plus bookstore and cafe. Becker spent about $6.5 million preparing the new space, and it shows.
Since 1990, Becker has amassed a treasure throve of more than 1,800 works ranging from Barent von Orley’s “Neptune and Nymph” (c. 1520) to the edgy 1990s S/M work of French photographer Gilles Berquet. The only disappointment in this otherwise world-class museum, which clearly caters to foreign visitors, is that there is little description of the works, and it is only in German.
And that is too bad because the collection of 18th Century French erotic prints, for example, is sublime and would have been even more fascinating had there been some shred of information beyond an approximate date and the occasional author’s name.
Still, no museum we saw matched the breadth and depth of Becker’s assemblage. Last year visitors to the two sites topped 80,000, according to a museum spokesman who added that Becker is also contemplating a similar museum in either eastern Europe or Russia.
Berlin
Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum
Berlin’s erotic museum is the brainchild of Beate Uhse, the septuagenarian grandmother whose name has been a household word in Germany since the 1950s. It was then that Uhse opened the world’s first shop for “marital hygiene,” ultimately championing the right to sell contraceptives.
These days, Uhse heads up what her publicity materials say is the world’s largest sex products merchandising business — an empire that includes a mail-order division, video and publishing sections, sex shops throughout Germany and, since 1996, a museum devoted to the art and history of sex.
How well known is this museum around the world? Berlin Tourismus’ Buhmann says his surveys show that in Asia the best-known tourist destination in the whole city is the Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum.
The multi-story collection of more than 5,000 sexual objects from around the world tends toward the classical, with a lot of Asian and Indian erotic miniatures mixed in with carved phalli from Bali, African fertility masks, 2,000-year-old Peruvian drinking vessels as well as more recent expressions of the horizontal urge. Best of all, the objects and artworks are described in three languages — German, English and French.
Unlike the building’s garish first floor sex shop, the museum has a quiet, carpeted, seductive feel, making visiting it a comfortable experience. It even has a pleasant coffee bar for taking a break. The only out-of-place, mood-clashing element are the occasional life-sized dioramas meant to explain topics such as fetishism and S/M.
But these are minor quibbles. The museum, assembled over several years’ effort, has an excellent permanent collection. On the top floor is an impressive Oriental section, including fine examples of Japanese Shunga art, with its outsized genitals, by Utamaro, Harunobu and others. Also noteworthy are the Chinese “Wedding Tiles,” 18th and 19th Century paintings on silk that had a definite sex education role, 19th Century Chinese brothel tokens and 20th Century Chinese porcelains.
Plunging on, one finds a similarly impressive and humorous collection of European objects — erotic pipes, snuff bottles, porcelains, plates and art. There is a theater showing vintage erotic silent films and cartoons.
A superb show, titled “Sodom Berlin,” featuring the works of Weimar-era artists George Grosz, Heinrich Zille, Rudolf Schlichter, Otto Schoff, Hans Bellmer, Gordal, Charlotte Berend-Corinth and others, runs through March 21.
Paris
Musee de l’Erotisme
When Joseph Khalifa and his three partners first decided to open their Musee de l’Erotisme in the Pigalle section, local city administrators were delighted. Not only did they support the idea of an upscale tourist attraction in a somewhat run-down neighborhood, but one local council member is reported to have said, “We take sex seriously in France and it’s about time we had a museum dedicated to it.”
Khalifa and partners clearly spared little expense in renovating the building, which once housed a cabaret, and opened in late 1997. Musee de l’Erotisme has the contemporary feel of an expensive art gallery or well-financed museum.
“Most people who come here expect to see classical examples of erotica, but we try to emphasize modern art more,” says Khalifa, adding that four of the museum’s floors change exhibits every two months.
For those who prefer more traditional examples of erotic art, the museum features a collection of Japanese netsuke along with examples of African fertility fetishes, Hindu temple friezes and, most intriguingly, depictions of gay Aztec men.
The emphasis, however, is clearly on contemporary sculpture and photography — an area Khalifa believes is generally under-represented in both museums and galleries. His future plans include an exhibit of erotic art produced exclusively by women — due in part to positive press from several European women’s magazines.
“More and more of the 8,000 or so monthly visitors to the museum have been women who have come to realize that what we have here is serious art and not pornography,” says Khalifa. The difference between them, he says, is this: “Pornography is to eroticism what American fast food is to French gastronomy.”
Amsterdam
Sex Museum or Venus Temple
This free-spirited city of canals, bicycles, tulips and liberal cannabis laws features two erotic museums, one decidedly more upscale and informative than the other.
The one to see is located on Damrak, one of Amsterdam’s main thoroughfares, and a short distance from the Central Train Station. Calling itself both the Sex Museum and Venus Temple, it has been open since 1985, attracting more than a half-million visitors annually, according to manager Jacob Nentjes.
The collection features an enormous array of objects from different time periods and places, shoehorned into a typically narrow Amsterdam building. The arrangement is somewhat chaotic and haphazard, from the sublime to the ugly, and there is little in the way of explanation — although, happily, whatever documentation there is appears in English as well as Dutch, German and French.
But for every complaint about the facility — it’s far too noisy in there — there are some stunning treasures for the practiced eye. On the ground floor alone we saw fine erotic carvings from the Tang Dynasty along with 18th Century engravings by Peter Fendi, an Austrian erotic-genre painter who was a favorite of the Hapsburgs and who specialized in producing paintings of upper-class orgies. Neighboring display cases provided more eclecticism: early 20th Century German pencil drawings, erotic cartoons of the Flinstones and an Aubrey Beardsley.
Venus Temple is not above playing a vulgar fun-house joke on visitors. A few steps inside the museum, guests gazing at the artifacts are startled by a loud “Psst, hey!” Turning toward the sound, they are confronted by a life-sized kinetic statue of an elderly flasher flinging open his raincoat. The shrieks and self-conscious laughter this specter elicits can ring through at least three floors. While annoying, the response demonstrates that the flasher does serve to break the ice for people feeling a bit tentative about entering a sex museum.
The other display that was genuinely unattractive — garish, badly lit, poor quality still photos from porn films — was mercifully confined to a small area.
The brief incursions into bad taste, however, are largely forgivable given that Venus Temple possesses an enormous range of artifacts from around the world. Here you can find a phallus-shaped oil lamp dating from Roman Carthage (c. 100 AD), 19th Century ivory dildos from Austria, wood carvings of copulating figures from native New Zealand peoples, penis-shaped walking sticks from 1920s Europe, along with samples of erotic playing cards and a requisite amount of less than interesting modern art. There is also a naughty postcards section and a set of private-screening film booths.
Much of the collection, according to Nentjes, has been purchased from art dealer Hans-Jurgen Dopp, a renowned art collector and expert in erotic art. If this museum does anything, it’s to amply illustrate the extraordinary variety of erotic expression from many different cultures over time.
Erotisch Museum
Less interesting, yet still worth a quick look when you’re strolling Amsterdam’s famous Red Light district, is the Erotisch Museum. This collection is quite small, a hodgepodge, really, featuring among other things, a very early version of a vibrator with a wind-up mechanism and the original packaging, and a series of erotic drawings by John Lennon presented to Yoko Ono on their wedding day. Additionally there are some Picasso prints and a small number of prints by other well-known artists.
The Erotisch Museum also houses a most curious little theater, done up in a pseudo-Disney style with toadstool-shaped chairs grouped around TV screens showing a pornographic cartoon version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The people watching as we passed through seemed to think it quite funny.
Barcelona
Museo de la Erotica
One major museum we were not able to visit is Museo de la Erotica in downtown Barcelona. According to owner Morten Sondergaard, a Danish businessman who opened its doors in 1996, the museum boasts a quarter of a million visitors annually.
Sondergaard describes his museum as a cross between Berlin’s Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum and Amsterdam’s Venus Temple. The emphasis in his collection is on traditional representations of erotic art: Indian reproductions of the Kama Sutra, African wood carvings and European illustrations from the 15th to the 20th Century. Other highlights include a collection of early erotic postcards, comics, and works by Picasso and Miro.
Copenhagen
Museum Erotica
The other museum we were not able to see is Copenhagen’s Museum Erotica. Our planned visit was interrupted by a serious national labor strike. , which made travel there all but impossible However, we were able to find out a few useful details. Museum Erotica has been drawing annual crowds of 125,000 since opening in 1993, says curator Ole Ege. He describes his collection as “a rich cross-section that illustrates the history of erotic expression.”
The museum features erotic paintings, sculpture, French postcards, photos, magazines, films and sex toys; a brochure promises visitors the opportunity to study the sex lives of such luminaries as “Hans Christian Andersen, Aristotle Onassis and many other famous people.”
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Altogether our visit to these museums showed that there is a lot more to them than bad jokes and an elbow in the ribs. They tell us a good deal about who we are and what human societies have seen as both forbidden and desirable. So successful have these European museums been in attracting visitors that the idea may soon spread to the U.S.
Already plans are under way to open the Museum of Sex in Midtown Manhattan. Its projected grand opening is late 1999.
Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp, who hold Ph.D.s in erotology (the study of a society’s erotically charged art and artifacts), publish Libido: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility, headquartered in Chicago.
IF YOU GO
– THE DETAILS
Hamburg: The Erotic Art Museum is located on the Reeperbahn between Gr. Freheit Strasse and Holstenstrasse. The Privart Museum is a short walk from the main museum and is located at Bernhard-Nocht Strasse 69. Admission to each location is about $8.70 or about $11.60 for both. Open daily from 10 a.m. to midnight. Both locations have excellent bookstores with selections in both German and English.
Berlin: The Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum is centrally located at Kantstrasse and Joachimstallerstrasse near the Zoo train station. Open daily from 9 a.m. to midnight. Admission is about $5.80.
Paris: The Musee de l’Erotisme is located at 72 Boulevard de Clichy and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Admission is about $7. Postcards and some art objects available for sale.
Amsterdam: The Sex Museum is at Damrak 18. Admission is about $2.30; open daily 10 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. The Erotisch Museum is located at Oudezijds Achterburgwal 54, walking distance from the Sex Museum. Admission is about $2.50.
Cophenhagen: Museum Erotica is located at Kobmagergade 24 and is open from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. from May 1 through Sept. 30 and from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Oct. 1 through April 30. Admission is about $9.
Barcelona: The Museo de la Erotica is located at Ramblas 96 and is open daily from 10 a.m. to midnight. Admission is about $6.80. For more information, the museum’s Web site is www.eroticamuseum.com.
