Sex museums. The politics and performance of display

Sex Museums is the first book to comprehensively explore what happens when museums display sex. It demonstrates how museum debates about what sex is and how to manage it have been integral to defining the parameters of sexual normalcy and for silencing non-normative voices as they relate to gender, race, and sexuality. The book traces a genealogy of museum exhibitions to examine the influence of display on the history of sexuality and to explore four interrelated themes. First, it treats the museum context (of the nineteenth- through the twenty-first centuries) as a highly influential site in the construction of modern sexual subjectivity and the categories of “normalcy” and “perversity.” Second, it analyzes a group of present-day museums, called sex museums, as explicit spaces that combine pedagogy and public entertainment to redefine what “sex” means. Third, it examines the successes and failures of sex museums and describes the pleasures and dangers associated with exhibiting dissident sexualities. Fourth, it proposes the seemingly paradoxical assertion that all museums are already sex museums, even as a diverse array of sexualities have been historically marginalized from the museum’s visual field. Thus, the book develops theoretical innovations in queer, gender, critical race, performance, and museum studies with practical applications for collection, curatorship, policy management, and visitor services in museums.

Details

Type

Book

Place of publication

Chicago, Illinois

Year

2016

Number of pages

286 pages

Language

English

ISBN

9780226315249

Open stacks or available on request

Open stacks

Illustrations

No

Bibliography

Yes

UDC code and author sign

707.41 Tyb

Volumes

1

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