Museum has city buzzing
San Francisco has a reputation for being a pretty liberal-minded city. But its newest museum still created plenty of buzz when it opened last week – it’s devoted to vibrators.
Tuesday 24 April 2012, 04:30PM
The Antique Vibrator Museum is designed to showcase kinky collectibles from the late 1800s to the 1970s and, in the process, the history of health and sexuality between 1890 and 1970, according to curator Carol Queen.
“The new exhibit contextualises the vibrator’s role in society and highlights how our attitudes around sex and female pleasure have evolved,” Queen said.
“It really gives us an appreciation for how far both society and technology have come.” The museum showcases vibrators collected since 1977 by the proprietors of Good Vibrations, a sex shop with five locations in San Francisco and Oakland, California.
They were donated by the Good Vibrations Corp., “All of the stores have these vintage vibrators on display and we decided we wanted to showcase these better,” Queen told
The Huffington Post.
The history of sex toys can be traced back thousands of years to dildos made of
stone or wood, but Queen says the museum is pegged strictly toward 20th century erotic instruments.
“We’re not doing ancient sex implements. The oldest we have dates back to 1890,” says Queen, who is one of the founders of International Masturbation Month, celebrated in May.
