Museum Erotica
Encyclopedia
Sex museum
A sex museum is a museum that displays erotic art, historical sexual aids, and documents on the history of erotica. They were popular in Europe at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, the era of the sexual revolution....
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, located just off of Strøget
Strøget
Strøget is a carfree zone in Copenhagen, Denmark. This popular tourist attraction in the centre of town is the longest pedestrian shopping area in Europe....
, Copenhagen's main shopping street. The museum was founded by director / photographer Ole Ege and business manager Kim Clausen. It originally opened in 1992 at Vesterbrogade 31 in Copenhagen. On May 14, 1994 it reopened at Købmagergade 24, where it remained until it closed in March 2009, following the sudden, unexpected death of Kim Clausen in 2008, and then the financial crisis.
The museum claimed to have had one million visitors http://www.museumerotica.dk/uk/. The museum often described itself as having "illustrated some of the sex life of Homo sapiens" http://www.museumerotica.dk/uk/, which reflects its very historic and holistic approach to its exhibitions.
The walk through the museum took a visitor through many exhibits in roughly chronological order. A good deal of written commentary in English and Danish explained and augmented many of the items on display. There were extensive exhibitions on the beginning of erotic photography, a room with Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
-centerfolds and other American pinups, and a special exhibition on Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, among other things. One of the final displays in Museum Erotica was a small room with a sofa opposite a large wall of small television screens each showing a different porno video. The selections reflected the eclectic nature of the museum's displays.