SEX & SENSIBILITY.(collection of pornographic artifacts obtained by the British Museum)

From: History Today | Date: September 1, 2000| Author: | Copyright information

AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

David Gaimster reveals the origins and contents of the BM's Secretum, a hidden repository of artefacts deemed pornographic and unfit for public gaze by Victorian curators.

SINCE THE INTRODUCTION of the printing press at the end of the Middle Ages with its ability to replicate the visual image, the dividing line between art and obscenity has been constantly changing. Today we are surrounded by the sexual image, on television, in magazines, on video and on our home PCs. Pornography is becoming an increasingly accepted part of British popular culture ...

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