Art, We Know What We Like

The Kinsey Institute is hosting its fourth annual juried art show. This year’s show features a wide variety of sex-related photos, paintings, sculptures, etc., chosen from over 700 plus submissions received this year. The show runs through the end of July at Indiana University School of Fine Arts Gallery in Bloomington. If you’re nowhere near Indiana, you can still check out the show by viewing the 100 plus works displayed in the online gallery.

I will say that this is a very LGBT positive show. That being said, I didn’t find very many of the images to be what I consider erotic. Perhaps they aren’t intended to be, although museum curator Jennifer Cahn seems to suggest that they are. Have a look and see what you think. Ask yourself why the show jurors considered each painting, photograph, or sculpture to be sexual. A phallic, ice-encased twig just starting to melt is erotic… to me. A woman artist’s self portrait of herself as a man is not erotic to me. Yes, it has to do with sex and gender but, in this case at least, that isn’t erotic to me.

However, while you’re visiting the Kinsey site, let me recommend a more interesting online exhibit. The Kinsey Confidential exhibit combines art (such as this Paint by Numbers Dildos by Bradley J. Wicklund) with sex-related questions and answers from the syndicated “Kinsey Confidential” column. Click the thumbnails to see the larger images; then click the larger images to see and read the questions and answers.