Cathy's Art Diary

Intriguing lecture at the National Portrait Gallery using works from the gallery to talk about sex in the Victorian era. Catherine Philips of The University of Bristol introduced us to a number of radical Victorian thinkers both campaigning for rights of sex workers of the time or introducing laws to limit sexual freedoms starting with Charles 'Boatswain' Smith, a Baptist minister in Stepney who established a refuge for sex workers, educating them to be domestic servants and finding them jobs with families moving out to the colonies. She moved on to Josephine Butler and Dadodhal Naoroji who fought to overturn the Contagious Diseases Acts and Annie Besant who republished a pamphlet of sexual education for which she was charged under the Obscene Publications Act. She then looked at Henry Labouchere who introduced the law to criminalise all male homosexual activity in the UK and Sir Richard Francis Burton who wrote about sexual practices he came across when travelling and t...

Interesting but slightly disappointing exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at the history of the scientific study of sex. I say disappointing because I had really looked forward to it as the adverts had been great and I knew about the erotica collection at the Wellcome but the exhibition seemed to wander a bit and have two distinct halves which were not really joined together well. The first section, which might have made more sense if I’d gone in through the correct door (better directions please!) focused on the Wellcome Collection and was fascinating. It looked at first gender reassignment, early sex   aids, gay and lesbian life through the ages and much more. However it all felt a bit random. The second section looked at the history of the scientific study of sex starting with Freud and Stopes   and working through to current studies. It covered Kinsey, Masters and Johnson who were the study of a wonderful recent TV series and much more. It was ...