Sex in Museums

“The Eroticism of Things” is the title of a 2018 exhibition at the Werkbundarchiv-Museum der Dinge in 2018. This museum in Berlin is an archive documenting 20th/21st-century industrial design and consumer culture with a collection of some 40,000 mass-produced objects. The exhibition website includes the following explanation: “While nudes have entered many living rooms as replicas of respectable works in the art-historical canon, erotica has often gotten censored, tabooed, and banned. The distinction between eroticism, art, and pornography has always been in constant flux and continues to sway people’s perception and categorization of sexually charged things.”

Nothing has changed throughout history, other than people’s perception. In 2023, parents complained that Michelangelo’s David, which was shown to students in a 6th-grade art class at a school in Tallahassee, Florida, was pornographic, causing quite a stir and the resignation of the principal. But this was not a unique event. Even when it was created, Leonardo da Vinci, while praising the artist and sculptor, suggested that Michelangelo might add a loincloth!

For whatever reason, or maybe it’s obvious, the discovery of an 8-inch carved-bone phallus has made the art news. I read the article in Hyperallergic, but it has appeared in publications around the world. The “discovery” was made in the collections of The Valkhof Museum in Nijmegen, Netherlands, which specializes in Roman archaeology and regional history. The phallus was found when a government-funded inventory of the museum’s 16,000 boxes of archeological specimens was carried out. At the point of discovery, only 300 of the boxes had been gone through! I don’t know how the story got out, but I would like to think it was a brilliant PR agent for the museum🙄

This made me curious about objects with a sexual orientation in other museums. The story of the “Secret Cabinet” in Naples is worthy of a Missive of its own. It is a collection of first-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, today exhibited in a separate section at the National Archaeological Museum. It is called “Secret” because the gallery was closed and opened so many times as attitudes toward sex changed. In fact, at one time the room was bricked closed, and the current installation only dates from 2000. This sculpture of Pan and a Goat is a highlight of the Cabinet.

There have been allegations that the British Museum destroyed sexually related artifacts in its collections. The Museum reassures us, however, that this is not the case with the collection of around 400 such works donated in 1865. Known as the Secretum, the collection was, from time to time, removed from public display but has now been dispersed to the appropriate archeological departments, in effect, hidden in plain sight. It makes me think of a bored child being taken through room after room and case after case of the 8 million objects in the Museum’s collection, until he stops in front of one and calls out, “Mummie, Mummie, look what they have here, why does it look like a penis?” What parent has not been put in such a predicament in public?

In many ways, the U.S. is much more puritanical than other nations. Even in Canada, women can go topless. In Germany, I read about co-ed saunas where men and women are accepted totally naked, but it is not obligatory. However, there are some in the United States who seek to counter this puritanical attitude. In Miami, Florida, in the Art Deco district, you will find The World Erotic Art Museum, library, and education think tank. The museum was founded by Naomi Wilzig (1934-2015) in 2005 and includes 4,000 artworks from around the world, dating from 300 BCE to the present. She had come from an orthodox Jewish home and did not know about erotic art until a request from her son, who knew she loved prowling antique shops and thought they might be a good source. She found that many of the antique dealers kept erotic items off view but would slowly open up and show them to her. Finding the quest fascinating, she built a collection which led to a book, lectures, and finally the founding of a museum. After being turned down in many places by communities believing erotic was merely porn, her son found her a welcoming location in Miami. Here is an example from the collection.

I will end with what is probably an apocryphal story of a highly respected curator of Greek and Roman Art at a major museum. It was said that when she retired after many years, one of her desk drawers was found to contain many of the phalluses missing from sculptures that were on view.

An old friend used to say to me, “The evil is in the mind of the beholder.”

Thoughts on “Raphael: Sublime Poetry”

When there is a blockbuster exhibition, it is hard to avoid it even at a distance. On March 29, “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” opened at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Without seeing the show, I would not presume to review it, but the very fact that it is taking place gives much to think about since, after Leonardo and Michelangelo, there is no other Renaissance painter with more renown.

Blockbuster shows have been around for a long time, and museums love creating them because they bring in the crowds, acclaim, and, of course, revenue. On the other hand, they cost a bloody fortune and take a great deal of time and work on the part of the organizing museum’s staff. The curators and director must convince their counterparts at the potential lending institutions as well as private collectors, to give up and risk their beloved works of art, which, for a time, they cannot show to the public or friends. This exhibition will not travel to other venues, reducing the risk to the art and making more people to travel to see it. The added prestige is countered by the costs since there is no other institution to share them.

The total of 237 works exhibited includes 33 paintings and 142 drawings, as well as tapestries and decorative arts. The loans come from some 60 institutions and private collectors. From the photos of the installation, it seems much of the lighting is dim in order to preserve the works on paper.

For many years, the Raphael altarpiece described simply as "Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints" was installed at the top of the grand staircase at the Metropolitan Museum. It is burned in my memory because I passed it so many times, but I could never get excited by it. Maybe that is because it was an early work, Raphael’s first altarpiece commissioned by the nuns of Sant’Antonio in Perugia for their private chapel. This was in 1504-1505, when Raphael was in his early 20’s and was not yet the great artist he would become over the short span of his life. At the time, the nuns knew he would not cost them as much as a better-known artist. In the seventeenth century, the nuns sold off the altar piece by piece. For this exhibition, the entire altarpiece was reconstituted, bringing together all the predella panels scattered far and wide.

In this painting, “The Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist” (The Madonna of the Rose), 1517-18, done near the end of Raphael’s life, you can better understand the title of the show “Sublime Poetry”. However, art historians, through history, education, scientific analysis, and personal opinion, believe that parts of the painting are by the hand of Raphael’s star student and assistant Julio Romano (1499-1546).

Artists learn by studying the work of those who came before, and Rembrandt was no exception. Rembrandt never went to Italy, but he did collect prints and drawings by Raphael. Raphael’s portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1514-1515) always brings to my mind Rembrandt’s self-portrait of 1640, based on the Raphael painting he saw and sketched in a sale of the collector Lucas van Uffelen’s estate in Amsterdam.

I will mention just two other notable works: The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, has lent this wonderful drawing of the heads and hands of two Apostles (ca. 1519-1520). It was already in the Ashmolean collection in 1846. These are quoted as “auxiliary Cartoon” for the Transfiguration, which was the last painting created by the master.

From the selection of decorative arts is a tapestry after Raphael, credited to two Flemish tapestry makers, Jan van Tieghem and Frans Gheteels. Dated to the third quarter of the 16th century, the subject, Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas at Lystra, otherwise known as “The Sacrifice at Lystra is from the Acts of the Apostles Tapestry series. Lent by Colecciones Reales, Madrid, it illustrates the impact of the master’s designs.

This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition was curated by the Metropolitan’s own Museum Carmen Bambach, who wrote the much-praised catalog. The show closes June 28.

Resurrected Monuments

Time flies, and over six years ago, I wrote a Missive, “Addressing the Statue,” about the concept of taking down statues that do not fit in with the current thinking. 

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2019/12/addressing-statue.html

I have always been opposed to dismissing the past, in any sense. You might say that another word for the past is History. We learn from history. I am sure you have heard the expression said to a young person going off into the world, “Fail early and fail often”. Why would anyone, meaning well, say that? It is simply that this is how we learn, from our mistakes.

Artnet had an article recently by Eileen Kinsella titled, “Toppled Monuments are Reappearing Across the U.S. Under Trump”. Much as it pains me, I have to say that, in my opinion, this is at least one positive aspect of the current administration, though it is probably being done for all the wrong reasons.

At the time of George Floyd’s murder, among others, a statue of Christopher Columbus was toppled in Baltimore and dumped in Baltimore’s harbor, citing the latter’s history of enslaving and colonizing the Indigenous people. Yes, that is abhorrent to most people today, but that ignores the fact that he is credited with discovering this Continent. I know he did not actually land on our shores, but still, one constituency in particular, Italian immigrants, is proud of him. He also satisfies a question of who was the founding father! I would have encouraged those who objected to the sculpture to have a plaque created stating their issue, but not destroying it. In any event, a replica of the Baltimore Columbus has recently been installed on the White House grounds!

Monuments represent the emotions of the moment, and these often change during periods of upheaval and power shifts. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation challenged Catholicism, Papal authority, and clerical corruption. This led to the destruction and removal of statues in many European churches. Today, we would see beyond their religious symbolism to revere them as works of art, but with the wave of iconoclasm they have been lost forever. A block of stone that would have once separated the nave and quire of Durham Cathedral was reused and found in one of the buildings of the Cathedral College. The figures were probably defaced sometime after the death of Henry VIII (1547).

The Southern Poverty Law Center found that over 160 Confederate monuments were removed between 2015 and 2020. Here, the distinction is between destroyed and removed. Some have been relocated or relegated to a museum. The artistic or historic value may be preserved, but their story is no longer one you might pass every day and learn as you walk by.

Confederate statues in tribute to Southern pride or white supremacy are also being reinstalled after they had been taken down, so as not to offend one constituency or another. Again, I would say that is part of history and that those who forget will relive it. General Albert Pike has been described as “a racist Confederate Civil War general who defended slavery and wrote a militant variation of 'Dixie.” He has also been described as a Masonic leader, an author, a poet, a philosopher, and a philanthropist. His toppled statue has been reinstalled by order of the Trump administration.

Here in Santa Fe, the obelisk, known as Soldiers’ Monument, at the center of the Plaza (elsewhere it might be called the town square) has been a political issue for years. In 2020, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day (known elsewhere as Columbus Day), the obelisk was toppled by a small group of Indigenous demonstrators. It was erected in 1867 to honor the Union army soldiers, mostly local Hispanic volunteers who died in Civil War battles to keep the Confederacy from overtaking the New Mexico Territory. One of the plaques on the base referred to battles with "savage Indians" in reference to Apache raids on settlements. The offensive words, however, had been chiseled out in 1974. Today, the architectural plinth remains in place while an ongoing debate rages along with cost studies for razing, rebuilding, or moving the monument to the Military Cemetery. I believe it should be rebuilt or at least the pedestal left in place, accompanied by an explanation of the full history.

That same year, a statue of Don Diego de Vargas was removed from the Cathedral Park. De Vargas had led the Spanish retaking and resettlement of New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, but he also ordered the killing of 70 Pueblo Indians in 1693. After a man was killed in Albuquerque during a 2020 protest demonstration around a de Vargas monument, Santa Fe’s Mayor had our statue preemptively removed to a long-unknown location. A year later, a former city councilor said he saw it in the garden of a home/business where it had been placed by the contractor who moved the statue in the first place. In 2024, it was placed on temporary exhibition at t the New Mexico History Museum.

The destruction and/or the resurrection of a monument is more than a passing current event; it becomes part of our history.