By Durant Imboden. The Erotic Museum was founded by Alain Plumey and Joseph Khalifa, two Parisians who assembled a vast collection of erotic art and artifacts in the 30 years that preceded the museum's opening in The two men turned a former cabaret into seven stories of galleries, some devoted to permanent displays and others featuring temporary exhibits of art and pornography.
On the lower floors, you'll see the erotic world's answer to the Louvre or the British Museum: Nepalese temple carvings, Aztec fertility idols, ceramic pornography from China, and such oddities as a yak oil lamp from Tibet "The flame is burning in the vagina of the tigress" , Japanese wooden sandals with phalli protruding from the soles, and Thai utensils for cracking betel nuts between simulated male and female genitalia.
Preth Century European exhibits tend to emphasize Satan and anticlerical themes. Upstairs, you'll find an early 20th Century porn movie where a skinny man and his hefty female companion are performing the same sorts of things that you'd see on an Internet porn site, but in black and white instead of color.
On the fifth level, you'll find a nice assortment of nudes and tableaux most of them more tasteful than racy and some interesting black-and-white photos of nude models in artists' studios during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The most fascinating part of the Erotic Museum--and a good reason to visit even if you've seen one artificial yoni or lingham too many--is the extensive gallery of brothel photos, drawings, and documents from the late 19th Century until , when bordellos were closed down by the French government.
Exhibit labels in French and English describe the role that brothels once played in French life. The labels also contain a few surprises, such as the fact that the Prince of Wales, Charlie Chaplin, and Cary Grant sampled the Paris brothel scene. The Erotic Museum serves--or services--a diverse clientele.
