Euston Road’s Wellcome Collection has been permanently mobbed since it opened six years ago, often containing exhibits with a decent shock factor to boot. And true to form, they’ve chosen to celebrate their recent £17.5m makeover with a crowd-pulling dynamo: the Institute of Sexology.
Co-curator Kate Forde agreed it was a sure thing in the Telegraph recently. “It’s free and it’s got sex in the title,” she told them, frankly.
And frank talk is exactly what the Institute excels in. Alongside more than 200 exhibits – highlights of which include a clutch of saucy, if intimidating Victorian sex toys, Marie Stopes’ private orgasm diary, original racy illustrations from The Joy of Sex, copulating horse videos and plenty of weird and wonderful studies by the sexology masters Kinsey, Freud, Masters and Johnson – they’re running a calendar of regular free drop-in events right through until the Institute closes in September 2015.
Currently on? Why, Cruising for Art, a series of one-to-one performances where visitors tuck a bandana in their back pocket and prepare to explore the furtive nods, subtle winks and knowing smiles that pepper the secret code of cruising for sex. (Or did before mobile apps made illicit encounters swipe-able, anyway.)
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There’s also a series that probes cultural attitudes towards pornography coming up in mid-January, or how about an unusual project for 16-19 year olds, in association with the Roundhouse: songwriting inspired by sex research? Head back in February to hear the results of all the orgasmic-focused inspiration.
By being about the study of sex, rather than sex itself, the exhibition should surprise more than merely titillate the throngs sure to pass through its doors. And with the events programme already shaping up to be fascinating, we’d wager quite a lot of people will come, er, multiple times.
Words: Tom Kihl
