Article
Yin and Yang
Author: Edward Porper
Opposing dictatorships and challenging the Church while supporting liberal rulers is probably the most direct way to assert one's independence - just as promoting unorthodox public projects goes a long way towards proving one's creativity. Nevertheless, one can't do Porto full justice without mentioning its "cultural entrepreneurship": several initiatives resulting in what can be called Porto's "Portugal's only" file. One of those initiatives is the city's Sex Museum that opened as recently as August 2025.
Far from being commonplace, sex museums aren't completely unique either. There are a few of them in the world, and they are mostly located where one would expect to find them. Amsterdam - the birthplace of Red Lantern districts; New York - a cosmopolitan mega-hub that has about anything and everything; Reykjavik - the capital of a country that had for centuries remained untainted by false morality and fundamentalist ideologies. Prague's inclusion in this list might seem less obvious but Czechia, too, has a history of rebellion against political or religious oppression. It is, therefore, Portugal's deep and centuries-long devotion to Catholic values that turns a Portuguese sex museum into a wonder (it also explains why it took so long for one to appear in the country).
As they say, there is no favourable wind for a ship that doesn't know where it sails. In other words, in order to succeed, one needs a very clear idea of what (s)he is trying to achieve...or avoid - and Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of obscenity "I know it when I see it" doesn't help much to define the latter. Arguably, when it comes to a contemporary sex museum, the best recipe for success is to pay tribute to the Ancient World. It helps to both ignore the chaos associated with sex through centuries of misrepresentation, and to focus on what's essential for any museum - namely, the art. In this case, the art of the human body. Hence a short preview that sets the tone for the extensive exhibition spread over two floors
Just like any art, the exhibition itself is subjective. Very few items are explicit while the rest leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Since there is no strict categorization, visitors are encouraged to come up with their own "labels" - such as, for instance", "Dance", "Transformation" and "Mystery". Each of the three happens to serve as a common link between sex as a physical/spiritual practice and life as a concept. Many of the exhibits fit into at least two of the above categories, some cover all three.
The museum has every potential to be a thing in itself - yet its founders made a different choice by introducing some exceptions (that still prove the rule). Two of the exceptions extract the exhibition from the realm of mystery and temporarily return it to a more pragmatic context
