Sex museum has rough first year

NEW YORK, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- The nation's first museum devoted to the history and psychology of sex has completed its first year of operation with financial problems that have forced a cutback in its exhibition schedule despite satisfactory attendance figures.

The Museum of Sex (MoSex) at Fifth Avenue and 27th Street has announced that its opening show, scheduled to close last July 13, will continue through next spring due to lack of funding for a new show. It also has laid off its curatorial staff and replaced them with freelancers and cut its security staff from eight to four.

"Most people don't know we're here," said Daniel Gluck, MoSex's founder and executive director, blaming a lack of funds for advertising and publicity. "We have had to rely largely on word of mouth to draw people to our first show, 'NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America."

Word of mouth has been good, he added, and the museum has come close to reaching its goal of 100,000 visitors in its first year despite a severe drop in tourism in the city.

"We're not in a financial crisis, although we have had to make some adjustments," Gluck, a 35-year-old computer age success story, said. "We're learning how to survive in a very tough environment."

Gluck sold his software development company profitably in 1999 to devote himself to developing the museum along the lines of several sex museums in Europe with the help of a board of distinguished scientists, historians, authors and artists. He and a score of investors bought a late Victorian building and renovated it handsomely for exhibition purposes at a cost of millions of dollars.

The first setback Gluck encountered was New York State's refusal to accredit MoSex as a museum, saying it would make a mockery of the word. This forced MoSex to open as a for-profit business that cannot solicit donations as tax-deductible or seek aid from charitable foundations and government cultural programs. It has had to charge $17 admission to cover costs, hardly a cheap thrill.

The Catholic League also attacked the museum, charging it is "run by pornographers," but there has been little opposition in general to the institution whose opening manifesto declared its mission is "to preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality, bringing to the public the best in current scholarship." The museum is open only to visitors 18 years old or older.

Gluck said the controversial aspect of MoSex also had resulted in difficulties in getting other museums to lend it material for its shows. Nevertheless he is going forward with plans for the museum's second exhibition, a unique survey of Chinese erotica over a period of two millennia, due to open next spring with important loan displays.

The museum has been adding to its own extensive collection of erotica, some of which was included in "NYC Sex," a show divided into several sections covering prostitution, abortion, birth control, burlesque entertainment, commercialized obscenity, fetishes, and censorship. These activities are illustrated by art, photographs, film, publications, and a variety of artifacts, and the museum's wall labels are exceptionally informative.

Although many of the exhibits are not for those who find explicit sexual materials embarrassing, some viewer privacy is provided by computer booths offering "1001 Nights" and other film material. Those who blush easily are advised to skip the "Tijuana Bibles," pocket-size cartoon books that taught generations of youth about sex, examples of sadomasochistic equipment, and homoerotic photographs of both men and women.

The show dwells on details of the city's bawdy past, from the dens of iniquity on The Bowery in the mid-1800s to the porno palaces of Times Square, only recently put out of business by Rudolph Guiliani when he was mayor. Its final display, "Safe," is devoted to the era of AIDS and how it changed the sexual scene forever.

The cast of characters on whom the show is focuses includes anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, free love advocate Victoria Woodhull, actress Mae West, birth control activist Margaret Sanger, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, sex change pioneer Christine Jorgensen, and author Xaviera Hollander, the self-proclaimed Happy Hooker.

Gluck said he feels MoSex is serving a serious purpose, especially at the beginning of the 21st century when almost any form of sex or sexual perversion is considered acceptable material for novels, plays, movies, and television, and sex clubs in the style of "Plato's Retreat" still thrive.

"When we get to the point of having profits, they will go toward museum maintenance and research and will be shared with several groups including AIDS Community Research Initiative of America and the Kinsey Institute," he said.