Our newly redesigned Spotlight Gallery allows our patrons to explore sexuality in a way that is personal and pertinent to their own experiences by presenting a wide array of sexual themes and concepts. This gallery offers a sampling of artifacts drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection of over 15,000 objects, including works of art, clothing, technological inventions and historical ephemera.
The themes currently explored in the gallery are: sex education, sex in art, illustration, anime, kinks, modern commercialized design, photography, sex and technology, the medicialization of sex, representations of gender and identity, as well vibratorsas alternate interpretations of the human body. The exhibition includes works by well known artists such as Keith Haring, Pablo Picasso and Alexis Rockman. Due to popular demand, several key artifacts from the museum’s two most recent exhibitions, Sex in Design/Design in Sex, and Kink: Geography of the Erotic Imagination, are featured in this new space as well as provocative and through provoking installations such as Mike Sullivan’s Sex Lives of Robots and Timothy Archibald’s Sex Machines.
Highlights of the technology collection include Archibald’s portrayal of homemade sex machines constructed from everyday household materials as well as commercial devices registered with the U.S. Monkey RockerPatent Office that prevent, improve or enhance sexual function. The gallery also has an interactive feature where patrons can gently touch both male and female RealDoll torsos. RealDolls, created by Abyss Creations, have gained immense popularity in the media and have most recently been seen on the television show CSI: NY and in the film Lars and the Real Girl. As well as having RealDoll torsos to touch, the exhibition also features both a full length male and a female RealDoll on display.
With the revision of our Spotlight Gallery, we hope to touch on a broader spectrum of themes and present the very best of current sexual scholarship in a playful and educational way.