Page 10 The Behrend Beacon The coolest museum ever by Stevenson Swanson Knight Riddler New York's newest museum is a dis creet affair, the architectural equivalent of a plain brown wrapper. The windows facing Fifth Avenue are opalescent to discourage peepers, and the entrance is around the corner on a side street, so museum visitors can slip in and out without attracting stares. Tasteful lettering at knee-level re veals that behind these milk-white win dows is a place devoted to the birds and bees. But this isn't a natural history museum. It's the Museum of Sex. "Sex is wonderful, and it's here to stay," purrs a former stripper on the museum's audioguide. "I guarantee it." Whether the Museum of Sex, MoSex, as it has dubbed itself, is also here to stay is another question. Claiming to be the first American museum devoted to the subject, MoSex is attempting to walk an almost impos sibly fine line. It wants to present seri ous scholarship about what academics call the history of sexuality. That in cludes not just shifting attitudes about sex but also such related matters as prostitution, birth control, and AIDS, all of which are covered in the museum's first exhibition, which opened last month. But the museum's narrow galleries also brim with photos and films of na ked men and women in a variety of geo metrically arresting postures. "We're clearly an educational insti tution," said Daniel Gluck, MoSex's founder. But. "we believe pornography is a form of popular culture, like Levi's or Coca-Cola," he added. "We want to take this material and give it its proper place." Public opinion may be fiercely di vided on what that place is, but the museum's opening exhibit leaves little room for doubt that the right location for a sex museum is New York. Called "NYC Sex: How New York City Trans formed Sex in America," the exhibit re counts nearly 200 years of sex and scan dal in the Big Apple, from the sensa tional 1836 ax murder of prostitute Helen Jewett to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's battles to shut down porn shops in Times Square. "We tried to show how sexual sub cultures formed and how New York be came Sodom on the Hudson," said How much time do you spend on the Internet? Knight Ridder Newspapers Internet use is a staple of college students' academic experience. Here are sonic highlights from a re cent study on how students use the Net: • 79 percent agreed or strongly agreed that Internet use has had a positive impact on their college aca- demic experience. • 46 percent agreed that e-mail lets them express ideas to a profes sor that they would not have ex pressed in class. • 73 percent said they use the Internet more than the library. • 48 percent are required to use the Internet to contact other stu dents in their classes. • 68 percent reported subscribing to mailing lists on which they can carry on e-mail discussions about topics they're studying. • 58 percent have used e-mail to discuss or find out a grade from an instructor • 65 percent who e-mail profes sors said they report absences via e-mail Source: The Pew Internet & American Life Project surveyed 2,054 U.S. college students at 27 two-year and four-year public and private institutions between March and June 2002. The findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 Gluck, 34, a former computer entrepre neur who spent more than four years bringing MoSex to fruition. Shortly after the completion of the Erie Canal in the 1820 s made New York the major American port, the city ac quired its reputation as Sin City, a place open to all sexual permutations. One display case features an 1855 guide to New York's bordellos, intended for the city's "sporting gentlemen." But the city has been more than a set ting for the salacious. Important free speech and women's rights struggles played out in the city's courtrooms and streets. New York was the home not only of Margaret Sanger, who helped coin the phrase "birth control" and worked to make contraceptives more readily avail able, but also of her nemesis, Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Soci ety for the Suppression of Vice, who deemed contraceptives obscene because he believed they would lead to promis cuity. In 33 years of raiding art galleries, newsstands, and other businesses, Comstock compiled a store of obscene material that, as Loyola University Chi cago historian Timothy Gilfoyle notes, probably would have been lost other wise. Some of the items on display at MoSex are from the Comstock lode. Still, does lust really run more ram pant in New York than in other cities? What about San Francisco, home of the Summer of Love in 1967? Or Chicago, whose Everleigh Club was nationally famous as a high-class brothel at the turn of the last century? A Playboy bunny waitress outfit on display at MoSex serves as a reminder that Hugh Hefner's magazine is still published in Chicago. New York beats them all, argues Gilfoyle, the author of a history of 19th Century prostitution in New York and a member of MoSex's academically heavy advisory board. "It's in the nature of the city, being the center of so much population move ment and the center of the media and en tertainment industries, to play the role of changing the way the country thinks about sex," he said. "Examples like Mar garet Sanger and Anthony Comstock re ally do put New York in the center of a national story." Even the modern condom industry owes a large debt to New York. In the late 19th Century, immigrant Julius Schmid realized that surplus sausage casings could be sewn up at one end to make prophylactics. Schmid's business DID You Know.... Sin A Plus Er. oy: Huge 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom Apartment Homes *On Site Laundry MEE Cable TV * Fabulous NEW Fitness Center and Study Lounge • A f,"t iti o ,740, 1;„ 1 4 V\? Y' Friday, November 15, 2002 lives on, marketing Ramses and other brands Later exhibits tell the story of the city's thriving gay and lesbian communities, as well as such fetishes as sadomasoch ism, which was introduced in New York in the 1930 s and 1940 s when practitio ners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. Gluck hit upon the idea for a sex mu seum by chance. After selling a software company in the mid-19905, he was cast ing around for a new project when friends recounted a visit to an Amsterdam sex museum. But European sex museums tend to be little more than glorified sex shops. He thought there was a place for a serious museum, a view Gilfoyle shares. In the last 20 years, the field of sexual history has expanded rapidly, to the point that the University of Chicago publishes an academic journal devoted to the sub ject. "Sex has a history," Gilfoyle said. "It just didn't start when we were horn." But the museum had a bumpy birth. Plans to build a new museum structure collapsed with the stock market, and later a state agency turned down Gluck's request for non-profit status, saying that his idea made a mockery of the word "museum." MoSex, which has drawn more than 12,000 visitors since it opened, is housed in a modest five-story building 011 an un distinguished stretch of Fifth Avenue near Madison Square. Even before the museum opened, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which sided with Giuliani in his battles over displays of art he deemed offensive at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, labeled it the "Museum of Smut," or "MoSmut." But most of the museum's critics have charged that the exhibition is not racy enough, especially for the hefty $l7 ad mission. "Boring," read one critique in the museum's comment hook, predict ing that MoSex would he "closed within the year." Gluck understands the visitor's point, but he defends the museum's decision to start with a relatively academic ap proach to its subject. "We started with a historic exhibit to show what we mean by a museum of sex," he said. "In our concern not to be perceived as leaning toward the titillat ing or pornographic side, we erred on the other side. If that means we're not the most exciting place, so be it.- ER COMMONS APA or The 2003-2004 Schoo ease by March 30, 2003, and Enter Our FREE RENT Dra Covered Parking Available *Convenient Location You Could Live At RENT FREE! I I ($l4) 23E-3456 520 E. Calder Waj, mate College www.caldeirixmw)ns.com Through the looking glass by Mike Pingree, KRT Campus OF COURSE I'LL COME BACK, DARLING A man met an Australian woman who called herself Bergittia von Buelow de Rothschild over the Internet, brought her to Philadelphia and conducted a whirlwind courtship, culminating in his purchase of a dia mond engagement ring worth more than $12,000. She took the ring, returned to Australia and stopped answering his e mails. A private detective he hired found out she is a con artist. IT WAS, UM, A SECURITY MEASURE A Southern California high school water polo coach was fired for his role in secretly videotaping girls undressing and taking showers in the A man going up an escalator to work in a Brisbane, Australia, shopping I mall was squirted on the back of his pants with two packets of soy sauce I by the man behind him. The victim told police he did not know the man, but, incredibly, it was not the first time the guy had done this to him. The squirter was arrested, Foreplay, also known as sage advise to his son. 'hors d'oeuvres'. Karl Benacci, Features Editor locker room I JUST FELT LIKE IT, OK!? but refused to explain why he did it .•.
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