Museum of Sex

Inquiries/Questions:

• Given the subject matter of the museum I'm interested to see how they balance history as entertainment and history as scholarship. 
• The Museum of Sex website notes the following: "the desire to sexually break the boundaries of physical and social modesty has long revealed itself throughout history. Despite repeated attempts to censor, sequester or “sanitize” this sexual past, artifacts left from previous generations prove our ancestors were not as asexual as an expurgated version of history would like us to believe." I have two questions:

1. How has society sought to censor and sanitize?
2. What has been censored and sanitized?

At the Museum:

This is a fascinating and very well done museum that successfully bridges history and entertainment.  It is what you make of it though--it can be purely academic or it can be purely entertainment.  Notably, most of the patrons were there for entertainment purposes but it would be hard to walk out of the museum without the intellect stimulated given the quality presentation of information through well researched articles and provocative primary sources.

The museum had four exhibits—three were relevant to my inquiries—1.  Night Fever:  New York Disco 1977-1979:  The Bill Bernstein Photographs; 2.  Knowns/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art; 3.  The Sex Lives of Animals; ObjectXXX:  Selected Artifacts from the Museum of Sex Archive; 4.  Hardcore: A Century & A Half of Obscene ImageryAn underlying theme of the disco exhibit was freedom.  It’s been a while since I saw Boogie Nights or Studio 54, so, going in, I did not recall the extent to which disco was tied to the LGBT movement.  The exhibit chronicles six select Disco clubs in NY with oral history, music, and Bernstein’s photos.  All senses were provoked by loud music, a mirror ball, the opportunity to consume an alcoholic beverage, smell, perhaps for good reason, was the only sense not provoked by the exhibit.  Interesting about this scene was its crossing of racial, generational, class, sexual, and gender barriers of the day.  The timing of the disco movement was interesting as it came on the heels of the Stonewall Riots.  Underlying this entire exhibit was the sense of liberation and how people were freed in this disco environment.   It seems that throughout American history, nightlife has demonstrated the power of being a point of equal access for anyone interested to venture past the velvet rope. 

The U.S. market for obscene materials began in the 1700s as it was imported from Europe.  As those imports were cracked down on in the early 1800s, a domestic production and trade developed by the 1840s, and New York became the center of the trade.  The prints could be found for sale in many public spaces around the city including hotels, markets, and rail depots.  At the same time, the health reform movement was spreading across the U.S. which included education around all matters sexual.  It was the Civil War that created an even larger demand for pornographic literature, prints, and photographs, and helped to expand the sex industry overall.  By the 1870s, trade was flourishing but Victorian values led to a crackdown on creation, circulation, and ownership.  This crackdown was led by Anthony Comstock who helped to develop stronger obscenity laws as well as the burning of all recovered material.  

 Some interesting findings in the museum included sex education materials given to WWII soldiers, the fact that vibrators were invented to treat female hysteria, and that some of the earliest pornography was developed not for entertainment but to challenge ecclesiastical and political leaders.  I was intrigued to learn about a case that went to the supreme court regarding tax dollars supporting the Library of Congresses translation of Playboy into braille.  Such translation was affirmed by the Court on the grounds of first amendment rights.  Also interesting was the ownership over who defines pornography.  To this effect, one display addressed the heightening of the sexual connotations of racism with nude depictions of native populations in publications like National Geographic while nude images viewed as obscene were at the same time under fire societally. 

The Museum of Sex far exceeded my expectations.  It successfully raises important questions and tells an important story that is not easily accessible in your typical American narrative.  The museum is about far more than the obscene.  It is about gender, sexuality, civil and human rights, entertainment, bigotry, homophobia, legal history, art, freedom, reform, and conflict all in the context of American history.  Whether you’re going for the pictures or the articles you’re sure to leave this museum satisfied. 

Central Park

Predictions/Inquiries:

How has the Park evolved over time?

In the Park:

Central Park was built between 1857 and 1860.  Motivation for the park followed the spirit of reform present in the middle of the 19^th century and well-to-do Americans who had seen and experienced Europe’s romanticized green spaces and desired their own at home. Further, Revolution had hit Europe in 1848 and fears struck the American aristocracy as distance grew between them and the poor.  These differences were clear in New York with slums such as the Five Points District and the mansions on Fifth Avenue for example.  In the absence of class comingling in the City, the hope was that a park would bring the classes together.  Underlying that was the idea that a park would elevate the lower orders of immigrants and laborers. Nevertheless, support from NY’s finest was essential to the construction of the park.  A desire to promenade and drive their carriages in a natural landscape, to increase tourism in the City, and for those with property that adjoined the Park, a desire to increase their real estate values all led to upper-class support. 

The momentum generated around the possibility of a grand park in New York led to  an interesting debate regarding where it should go and who it should serve. The City utilized eminent domain to take the 843 acres that would comprise the ultimate park.  One well-to-do resident commented that “the Park should never be made at all if it is to become the resort of rapscalians.”  A voice of the lower sorts called on the park commissioner not to “allocate to aristocratic pride and exclusiveness,” but instead to create “a spot for all classes of our fellow citizens.”  Hartford born Frederick Law Olmstead and English immigrant Calvert Vaux, with their “Greensward” plan, won the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park’s design competition.  Their design was an attempt “to school both patrician and plebian cultures by transmitting, almost subliminally, civilized values and a harmonizing and refining influence.”  Olmstead and Vaux further desired “a retreat from the city’s competiveness and congestion” and the “habit of mind, cultivated in commercial life” (Burrows & Wallace, 794).  When the Park opened however, the working class turned out to be the losers as it was too far from their districts and too expensive to get there.  Further, Olmstead, as Park Superintendent, created a set of rules and regulations to train in “the proper use of” the Park.  Such regulations included the “forbidding of German singing society picnics” and “Irish church suppers,” thus forcing plebian consumption on patrician terms. It wasn’t until the 1870s that the working class began to frequent the Park. 

Today, Central Park seems to have met its founders’ intentions in a more democratic fashion. My stroll through the Park saw people of all different ages, races, ethnicities, and classes using the park in a variety of ways.  The park has evolved to meet those more democratic desires as well, seen in the inclusion of baseball fields, boat rentals, playscapes, and dog parks.  Despite the fact that you might see a biker, a rollerblader, and a pedestrian jockey for position on the promenade, or sense the city via looming buildings and inevitable sounds, the greatest achievement of the park is that it nevertheless delivers a sense of refuge apart from the “city’s competitiveness and congestion.” But as I found in one other NY park, how public space is utilized continues to be defined in undemocratic ways.

Castle Clinton

Prediction:

• I predict that I’ll learn about the changing role of the Castle Clinton in New York City’s history. 

At Castle Clinton:

Infront of a diarama of how the "Castle"
looked in the 1800s 

Castle Clinton, like the Collect Pond Park, is another representation of how NYC and it's use of space has evolved over the course of its history.  Saved from demolition in 1946 the “Castle” is today a National Monument.  Over time, it has served New York as a defensive fort (1811-22), an opera house and convention center (1824-54), an immigration center (1855-1890), and an aquarium (1896-1941).  The changing purpose of the “Castle” mirrored trends in greater American society.  The fort was developed to protect the city after the Revolution where the British easily invaded and controlled it for the duration of the War. As immigration grew with industrialization in the last three quarters of the 19^th century, a control center was necessary.  The "Castle's" literature boasts that two out of three immigrants coming to the U.S. at that time came through it. Until the 1890s, immigration was state controlled.  It was then that Ellis Island was created and the Feds took over.  With increasing interest in science at the end of the 19^th century, the “Castle” transitioned to an Aquarium.  It took advocacy from a group of historic preservationists to save the building and restoration on it begin in 1970.  Altogether, Castle Clinton is not an overly interesting site, but like most other sites I visited in NY, I’m sure that with some digging there is greater substance to chew on. 

Commentary on Immigration through Castle Clinton:  One of the more interesting things on hand at the museum.