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The Secretum or secret museum was a section of the
BBC, retrieved 25 July 2014 The Secretum was officially created in 1865 to store all historical items deemed to be obscene. It is said to have been formally created in answer to the requirements of the
The Secretum or secret museum was a section of the British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
created officially in 1865 to store all historical items deemed to be obscene.
History
Many items considered obscene were kept under key as early as 1830. One of the earliest artifacts was theStatue of Tara
The Statue of Tara is a gilt-bronze sculpture of Tara that dates from the 7th-8th century AD in Sri Lanka. Some argue it was looted from the last King of Kandy when the British annexed Kandy in the early nineteenth century, it was given to the ...
which was hidden for thirty years from the 1830s.Episode 54 - Statue of TaraBBC, retrieved 25 July 2014 The Secretum was officially created in 1865 to store all historical items deemed to be obscene. It is said to have been formally created in answer to the requirements of the
Obscene Publications Act
Since 1857, a series of obscenity laws known as the Obscene Publications Acts have governed what can be published in England and Wales. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt," stated in 1868 by Lord ...
of 1857.
From the 1960s onwards, the artifacts were removed from this special collection and incorporated to the pertinent sections in the rooms open to the public, the book Recreations with the Muses, now located in the Enlightenment Gallery is an example of this. Nowadays only a few items remain under key in the Cupboard 55 and 54 in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities. Among many other items, it previously contained the collection of ancient erotica
Erotica is literature or art that deals substantively with subject matter that is erotic, sexually stimulating or sexually arousing. Some critics regard pornography as a type of erotica, but many consider it to be different. Erotic art may use ...
given to the museum by George Witt (1804–1869), physician and collector of phallic antiquities. Inaccessible by the public, it was a repository for exhibits of an erotic nature.
A more recent example of problematic content is the Warren Cup which features scenes of homosexual acts. The cup was offered to the British Museum but because of the subject matter it was thought to be too contentious to purchase. The cup was eventually purchased at a much higher price and is now one of the museum's important artefacts.
See also
* List of sex museums *Private Case
The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from ...
(British Museum)
* Secret Museum, Naples
References
Bibliography
* * Sex museums Sexuality in classical antiquity Sexuality in the United Kingdom Museums in popular culture Collection of the British Museum {{sex-stub