This museum is steps away from the Jewish museum. It's on the underground station line. And you can get off here if you've bought the Gray line hop on hop off New York bus tour with recorded commentary. They mention Macy's department store founded by Jewish brothers - one of whom died on the Titanic with his devoted wife who refused to leave him and get in the life boat. The tour guide doesn't tell you to get off here for the Jewish Museum and the Sex Museum but we knew.
The Sex Museum is on two floors. The ground floor has the shop and the exhibition on animals and sex, with lots of videos taken by zoos and safari parks which have breeding programmes and fund investigation.
I already knew from a visit to a UK bird park that flamingos are encouraged to breed when they see other flamingos going at it. So the park installed mirrors to give the impression that twice the number of birds were indulging in an orgy. This method did seem successful. Makes you wonder about human peer pressure and teenage sleepover parties.
To my surprise nothing in the museum about flamingos. But my interest in wildlife had already been roused and I wanted to linger. In contrast to some of the male visitors who rushed past and upstairs to see what was shown and said about human sexuality.
Frankly, I found the information about animals quite shocking. If you think the behaviour, photos and videos of people on adult dating sites sites is uninhibited, animals are even more so.
Some animals have group sex. Some are bisexual. Others mate with anything, any age, too young to breed, the animal equivalent of sex predators.
A small number will pair off and stay devotedly coupled. I've been researching on line for a project for children and wonder what I dare tell them and how much to comment. A friend told me his 9 year old daughter liked watching wildlife TV programmes. One showed baby birds eating each other. He wondered whether this might upset her. But she wasn't phazed; not as much as he was. (He was concerned for the birds, himself, and his daughter. She just shrugged.)
After this museum shock seeing animals and reading about them, I raced upstairs to catch up. (I'd lost my companion and was running short of time.)
It would take a while to read all the captions and digest the significance. They showed: condoms, art displaying sex acts of humans and robots, films though the ages and how censorship had changed and landmark films.
And sex advice films showing different sexual positions. That was really useful.
The shop had some amusing books. One on make your own sex toys - not serious, things like woolly condoms.
Another was on sexual versions of fairy tales. Things like Snow white and the seven gay dwarfs. I'm now sorry I didn't buy that for a laugh. I was trying not to buy heavy things because of luggage weight flying home.
The shop also sold chocolate covered condoms. I think every person will get something quite different out of visiting this museum. Strange that I was shocked, but not by the human stuff at all, only by the animals.
Sex Museum Location Information
I had visited another sex museum in China, when it was in Shanghai. It has now moved to a city further south, which presumably means lower rental and makes a lesser-known city more of a tourist attraction.
In Europe other museums are in Amsterdam and Prague.
Museum of Sex
233 Fifth Avenue,
At 27th.
New York
www.museum.of sex.com
Entry fee $15+ tax, students and seniors $14+tax (no under 18s).
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