Image © Carl Streller.

Drawing on the Kinsey Institute's permanent collections, Naked Spaces investigates the ways artists manipulate architectural representation to communicate ideas about sex, gender, and the erotic. Architectural form is used by artists working around the globe--and across time--as an invitation to view, but also as a plea for privacy; architectural space is used a framing device as well as screen. The diversity of artworks included in the exhibition creates an opportunity for viewers to consider the role played by the built environment in the construction of their own private and public identities.

The exhibition features works by Herbert Ascherman, Bruce Barnes, Franz von Bayros, David Bekker, Tom Bianchi, Edouard Chimot, Ralph Nicholas Chubb, Vincent Cianni, Dominque Vivant Denon, Michael Fingesten, Edie Fake, D. Keith Furon, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Suzuki Harunobu, Walter Sigmund Hempel, Clifford Raven Ingram, Toby Kaufmann, Max Kislinger, Rita Koehler, Clarence John Laughlin, Lehnert & Landrock, Richard Lux, Michael Miksche, Marcantonio Raimondi, Anne Roecklein, Félicien Rops, Emilio Sanchez, Ronald Searle, Carl Streller, Arthur Tress, Spencer Tunick, and Dirk Vellert.

Guest curator Susan Johnson-Roehr, Ph.D., is an architectural historian at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Since the invention of photography, the camera has been turned towards loved ones to document birthdays, vacations, graduations, and other significant events. For each of the couples included in this exhibition, however, photography is not a method of simply recording events but a means of exploring their partnership through the creation of art.

While the photographs serve as documents of a couple’s life together, they also reveal the trust and respect that each partner has for the other. A Place Aside, organized by guest curator Garrett Hansen, features images from nine contemporary photographers working in the United States, China, Brazil, and Japan: Jeff Moerchen, Alexis Culver, Audim Culver, Gustavo Gomes, Yuhki Touyama, Fabien Seguin, Julie Barnofski, Garrett Hansen, and Tanya Bezreh.

Lecture: Closer: Weston, Callahan, and Cameron Photograph their Partners, Friday, September 28, 12:15–1 pm, Indiana University Art Museum. Garrett Hansen, photographer and guest curator of A Place Aside, will discuss the role of relationships in the work of three photographers represented in the IU Art Museum’s collection and their influence on his own work. Prints by Edward Weston, Harry Callahan, and Julia Margaret Cameron are included in Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers, on view at the IU Art Museum from September 11– December 16, 2012. Garrett Hansen’s photographs of his wife, Ellen, are included in A Place Aside.

Gender Expressions uses contemporary photographs, fine art prints, and other materials from the Kinsey Institute collections to illustrate the various ways that people express their gender identity or challenge societal expectations about gender roles. A selection of magazines, books, newspaper clippings, and other materials from the library and archives takes a look at transgender history in the United States.

Artists represented in this exhibition include Mariette Pathy Allen, Jess Anthony, Herbert Ascherman, Mia Beach, Heather Christoffer, Jess T. Dugan, Leonor Fini, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Danielle C. Head, Hans van der Kamp, Vivienne Maricevic, Ohm Phanphiroj, Len Prince, Carson Rader, Sarah Taavola, Cara Lee Wade, Martin Weinberg, Jessica Anthony, Dennis Chamberlin, Michael Grecco, Linda Hesh, and Herb Ritts.

Ephemeral Ink show poster, featuring 'Maryanne, IN' by Jeff Crisman.

Ephemeral Ink features depictions of tattoos and tattooing that provide a glimpse into the evolution of tattooing style and technique over the course of a hundred years. Individuals from many walks of life and of all ages have had their bodies marked with needle and ink, for both personal and professional reasons. These marks change through time as bodies age, inks change, and tattoos are added to, covered up, or otherwise altered. Vintage and contemporary photographs in Ephemeral Ink allow us to see people’s tattoos at particular moments in their lives.

Materials in the exhibition include flash art, images of tattoos by notable artists Les Skuse and Bert Grimm, artwork by Utagawa Kunisada, Alberto Martini, Kirk Richard Smith, and Samuel Steward, and a selection of text materials and ephemera from the Kinsey Institute library. There are also works by anonymous and known fine art photographers, including Herbert Ascherman, Jeff Crisman, Jess T. Dugan, Michael Grecco, Chas Ray Krider, June Yong Lee, George Platt Lynes, Dianora Niccolini, Len Prince, Rahul A. Saha, Michele Serchuk, Tom Stio, and Michael Wenzler.

The exhibition was curated by Amy Tims, a historian and librarian who recently graduated from the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science. A version of this show was on exhibit at Marian University, February 20 - March 23, 2012.

The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show includes artworks addressing gender issues, sexuality, reproduction, sexual politics, romantic relationships, and the human figure. In 2012, artworks have been selected from among the applicants by a panel of three jurors: Louise Lippincott, Curator of Fine Arts at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Betsy Stirratt, Director of the Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University, and Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Curator of Art, Artifacts and Photographs at The Kinsey Institute.

All works selected by the jurors will be included in The Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show 2012 at the Grunwald Gallery of Art, May 18 to July 21. Prizes for "Best in Show" and "Gallery Visitors' Choice" were awarded at the opening reception at the Grunwald Gallery of Art on May 18, 2012.

For more information about the artworks, opening night events, and visiting Bloomington to see the show, visit the Juried Art Show page »

Artworks from previous juried shows may be viewed by following the links below:

• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010
• 2011
  

Eric with Flowers, by Laura Hartford.

Man as Object presents works of art that examine the visibility of men and masculinity from female/feminist/transgender perspectives. By surveying the ways men are represented in contemporary art by women, this exhibition opens new dialogues regarding the myriad of ways women view men in today's culture and society. It marks an important development in feminist art, which has long concentrated on images of women meant to challenge stereotypical notions of womanhood. A gallery filled with works depicting men, created by women, actively resists the prevalence of the male gaze in art. This traveling exhibition will be accompanied by a selection of artworks by female artists depicting men that is drawn from the permanent collection of The Kinsey Institute.

Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze was organized by Karen Gutfreund, Priscilla Otani, and Brenda Oelbaum for the Women’s Caucus for Art with Tanya Augsburg, Assistant Professor, San Francisco State University, as Juror. Prior to coming to Bloomington, it was shown at the SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco.

An opening reception was held at The Kinsey Institute on Friday, April 13, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. A panel discussion, A Dialog with the Artists on Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze, was held prior to the show opening, April 13, from 4:00 to 5:00, in Morrison 007 (ground floor).

Anonymous photographer, United States
Two sailors kissing, c.1941-45
Gelatin silver print

This timely exhibition, drawn entirely from the Kinsey Institute’s art and library collections, features visual material from the American Civil War to the 21st century. Many of the items represent popular culture in America during World War II, as Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues spent those years traveling around the country collecting a variety of research material as well as data for their study of human sexual behavior. Cartoons, propaganda leaflets, postcards, photographs, magazines, pin-up calendars, drawings, prints, and a variety of novelty objects are featured, as well as a selection of contemporary images by Garrie Maguire, Len Prince, Herbert Ascherman, and other photographers whose work addresses war in the modern age.

Opening reception was held Friday, January 20, The Kinsey Institute Gallery, Morrison Hall.

This exhibit was also open to the public during the Kinsey Institute Open House, Saturday, January 28. This public event was offered in conjunction with the 2012 PRIDE Film Festival at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in downtown Bloomington.

ALSO: Read When Sex and War Meet - Featuring images from the exhibit and an interview with Catherine Johnson-Roehr, produced by WFIU.

Untitled, 1991

Len Prince is a New York-based photographer who has produced an impressive range of work in a career that spans more than four decades. He excels at portraiture and is especially known for his work with celebrities such as Debbie Harry, Eddie Izzard, and Drew Barrymore. His striking photographs of the nude figure display his skill with composition and lighting.

Prince has recently completed a major body of work titled Self Possessed, for which he collaborated with Jessie Mann, the daughter and model of noted photographer Sally Mann. The Kinsey Institute is fortunate to have received a major gift of more than 225 Len Prince photographs from his long-time patron William Zewadski. This exhibition features a representative selection of prints from this donation.

Debi M with Barry, 1991

Opening reception: Friday, October 21, 6:30-8:30 pm. Artist’s talk by Len Prince was held Friday, October 21.

A 148-page catalog illustrated with more than 100 b &w and color photographs from the Len Prince collection is available in both hardcover and softcover editions: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2519728

Read more about Len Prince in Kinsey Today, and find his interview with Curator Catherine Johnson-Roehr

Artworks from previous juried shows may be viewed by following the links below:

• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2010

High-quality prints of the 2011 Juried Art Show poster designed by Lisa Kinsey Weber are now available for purchase. You can find more details here »

Book cover
Jet Set Switch published 1966.

Storytellers provides a rare opportunity for gallery visitors to view a wide range of material pulled from The Kinsey Institute’s extensive library collection, with an intriguing selection of pulp fiction paperbacks from the 1960s, illustrated erotic novels, underground comic books, Japanese pillow books, and other narrative texts. Story-driven artworks are also included in the exhibition, ranging from vintage photographs, prints, watercolors, and drawings by anonymous and known artists to a series of Judy Chicago lithographs and other contemporary pieces.

Opening reception was held on Friday, April 8, 5:00 - 7:00 pm, The Kinsey Institute Gallery.

You can also see selected images from Storytellers in our online gallery at KinseyInstituteGallery.com, courtesy of LiveBooks.

Charles West
KWRV2 #1, 2007
Cyanotype

Organized by guest curators Herbert Ascherman Jr. and Jeannette Palsa, As We See Them presents the work of eleven artists who are using some of the earliest photographic processes to create contemporary images dealing with sexuality and the human figure. This diverse group of photographers has put aside digital technology to explore the possibilities of these 19th century processes. Featured works include cyanotypes by Patrick Alt and Charles West, platinum-palladium prints by Herbert Ascherman Jr. and Jeannette Palsa, gum bichromate prints by Laurent Benaïm, photogravures by Constantine Gedal, tintypes by Cynthia Greig, ambrotypes by Ed Ross, daguerreotypes by Charlie Schreiner, and aluminum-types by Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi.

Featured artist and guest curator Herbert Ascherman Jr., presented a lecture: “Modern Vision, Classic Methods” on Thursday, February 3rd.

Tom Stio
Gravid Torso, 2005
Archival inkjet print; 2006.8.8.

Nature & Nurture is the first exhibition from The Kinsey Institute to highlight its collection of fine art, books, and other materials on the subject of human reproduction. The exhibition uses fine art photographs, paintings, prints, sculptures, and books to illustrate pregnancy, birth, child rearing, development of gender identity, and parent/child relationships.

Featured artists include Deena des Rioux, David Teplica, Yara Ferreira Clüver, Matthew Weir, Osamu James Nakagawa, Tom Stio, Michael Wenzler, Les Sattinger, Jeffrey Rothenberg, George Platt Lynes, Leonor Fini, Julie James, Grace Benedict, Brad Miller, Kim Murak, Herbert Ascherman, Cara Judea Alhadeff, Niki Grangruth, Michael Rosen, Ani Garrick, Angela N. Hunt, Arkady Tzykun, Garry Trudeau, Dovrat Amsily-Barak, Karl Gustav Kroeppler, Mariette Pathy Allen, Judy Dater, Mia Beach, JeongMee Yoon, Shen Wei, John Lucas, and video artists Adam Trowbridge and Jessica Westbrook.

Featured artist Yara Ferreira Clüver presented a lecture, The Female Body Transformed Through Experience: Personal Truth, Public Controversy, on Friday, September 10.

Édouard Chimot (1880-1959), France
Untitled, mid 20th century
Etching
2002.16.118
Donated in 2002

In 2002, an anonymous American collector generously donated more than six hundred original artworks to The Kinsey Institute. This exhibition features more than 50 pieces from this significant collection, including paintings, prints, and drawings by known and anonymous European artists working in the late eighteenth through mid-twentieth century.

Unlike most Kinsey Institute exhibitions that display artworks acquired from a wide variety of sources, this show provides visitors with the opportunity to view a unique collection that reflects the connoisseurship of a single individual. Featured artists include Suzanne Ballivet, Franz von Bayros, Louis-André Berthommé de Saint-André, Charles Chaplin, Édouard Chimot, Jean Cocteau, Dominique Vivant Denon, Jules Pascin, and Fédor Rojankovsky (aka Rojan).

Ann Piper
Sheela-na-gig
oil on canvas.

Featuring 100 artworks chosen from among 685 submissions, the Juried Art Show includes photographs, paintings, sculpture and mixed media explorations of topics of sexuality, gender identity, romantic relationships, and sexual politics.

Jurors for the 2010 Juried Art Show are Lisa D. Freiman, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Betsy Stirratt, Director of School of Fine Arts Gallery at Indiana University; and Garry Milius, Associate Curator at The Kinsey Institute.

Visit the exhibit website to view artworks, hear an interview with the curators, and discover the winners of Best in Show and The People's Choice awards.

Poster for Private Eyes: Amateur Art from The Kinsey Institute, featuring ink drawing of topless woman on brown paper bag. Click for larger version.

Private Eyes: Amateur Art from The Kinsey Institute Collection explores the unique characteristics of homemade erotic artifacts. These one-of-a-kind items include drawings, paintings, carved figures, handmade cards, scrapbooks, and altered coins from The Kinsey Institute’s permanent collection of art.

These “artworks” were intended for private consumption and created with specific individuals in mind, unlike mass-produced, commercially distributed pornography. To date, these materials have received scant scholarly or sociological attention, and The Kinsey Institute is displaying the majority of these items for the first time.

This exhibition was curated by Betsy Stirratt, Director of the IU School of Fine Arts Gallery; Blaise Cronin, Dean and Rudy Professor of Information Science, IU School of Library and Information Science; and Garry Milius, Associate Curator at The Kinsey Institute.

More information about this show is available here »

J.D. Talasek
Untitled, 2000
Gelatin silver print.

This exhibition explored diversity and the human body, through a display of artistic representations from various cultures and time periods.

There was an opening reception on Friday, September 25th, 5-7 pm in the Kinsey Institute Gallery, Morrison Hall, 2nd floor. Photographer Michele Serchuk presented a guest lecture at 4pm, in Woodburn Hall 120, titled "Chasing the Erotic Portrait."

Wesley Harvey
Lady-Pot, 2006
Wood-fired porcelain

This exhibition featured works from the collections of The Kinsey Institute by modern artists exploring a wide range of media, including photography, painting, printmaking, and ceramics.

Sarah Taavola
Will You Malign Me? (Part 2), 2009
Digital photograph

The fourth annual Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show featured more than 100 artworks in a wide range of media created by contemporary artists from across the U.S. and the world. SOFA Gallery.

Anonymous artist, Iran
Couple on a swing, 20th century
Paint on paper

Eros in Asia is the first exhibition from The Kinsey Institute to highlight its extensive collection of erotic artwork from across the Asian continent.  In the 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey actively collected visual materials from around the world, to enable him to study sexual behavior and attitudes.

Since that time the institute has continued to acquire paintings, prints, illustrated books, sculptures, and art objects from Asian countries, each of which has its unique artistic traditions and genres for the visual representation of sexuality. Although the majority of the artworks in the exhibition were produced in China, India, Iran, and Japan, the countries of Turkey, Mongolia, and Burma are also represented in the show.

Thor (Samuel Steward), United States
Three Wheelers, c.1954
Ink on paper

Selected images from this exhibit are available online at KinseyInstituteGallery.com. Choose "Pre-Revolutionary Queer" from the "Exhibitions" menu.

This exhibition brings together a diverse collection of artwork, photographs, newsletters, magazines, and other materials from the Kinsey Institute archives documenting the existence of a vibrant but largely underground gay culture prior to the start of the modern gay rights movement in the late 1960s.

Featured artists include Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Etienne (Dom Orejudos), George Platt Lynes, Mike Miksche, and Sam Steward.

Hustler Magazine, United States
November 1980

Just in time for the upcoming elections, The Kinsey Institute offers a glimpse of presidential politics viewed by adult and underground media sources from its unique and rich collections. Featuring magazines, tabloids, newspapers and newsletters from the later half of the 20th century, this exhibit reveals a different perspective on the elections - sometime humorous, and often out of sight from that of the mainstream media. "Sex and Presidential Politics" is part of the Indiana University Libraries’ “Politics and Presidents: A Month-Long Celebration of Archives and Special Collections.”

You can read more about this exhibit in the Fall 2008 edition of Kinsey Today.

Herbert Ascherman Jr., United States
Hermes, from The Mythology Series
Platinum print

Herbert Ascherman has been working as a fine art photographer for more than forty years, yet the photographs in this exhibition come from a body of personal work previously known to only a small group of friends and collectors. Selected from more than 400 original prints in the Institute’s permanent collection, these photographs represent Ascherman’s four decades of exploring human sexuality in all its fascinating variety.

The curator of this exhibition is Claude Cookman, an historian of photography and a professor in the School of Journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington. He says of Ascherman's work: “Based on the evidence in these photographs, people feel absolutely comfortable engaging in sexual play in front of Ascherman’s camera. From bondage to pony games, from the domination scene to expressive dance, as individuals, couples and groups, they abandon all inhibitions with this photographer. The result is a refreshing naturalism, shared not just with the photographer but all who feast on these images.”

Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show 2008

This multi-media show featured photographs, sculptures, paintings, textiles, and mixed media pieces submitted by artists from across the United States, Canada and England. The nearly eighty contemporary artworks explored a range of topics including eroticism, body image, motherhood, gender, and the human figure.

Jurors for the exhibit were photographer Herbert Ascherman, Kinsey Institute art curator Catherine Johnson-Roehr, and gallery owner Pet Silvia.

William Hogarth
Before, 1736
Engraving

Women of Pleasure examined the depiction of women in 18th and 19th century European erotic art and literature, using paintings, engravings, etchings, photographs, artifacts, books, and other materials from the Institute's collections.

Dana Rabin, Ph.D., a historian from the University of Illinois, presented a lecture titled "The Sorceress, the Servant, and the Stays: Sexuality, Race, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain, " on Friday, February 22, 2008. Following the lecture, the curator of the exhibit gave a brief talk in the gallery (2nd floor, Morrison Hall). This event was offered as part of ArtsWeek 2008.

Interludes is an exhibition of paintings by Michael Mogavero, as well as art from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. The show was curated by Victoria Star Varner, professor of art at Southwestern University. It was organized for the Brown Symposium XXXV, Sex Talk: A Symposium with Benefits (Kinsey Institute affiliated faculty member Dr. Debby Herbenick is one of the speakers).

Kinsey Institute press release available here » (pdf)

Ephemeral Ink features a selection of tattoo art drawn from The Kinsey Institute Collections. The exhibition was curated by Amy Tims, an intern at The Kinsey Institute from the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS).

Show curator Amy Tims and Kinsey Institute Curator of Art, Artifacts, and Photographs Catherine Johnson-Roehr gave a lecture about the exhibit on February 24th, 2012.

Discover 150 years of urban history through the lens of gender, sexuality, and nonconformity. This exhibition uses four themes—individuals and their bodies, family and home, communities, and political action—to present the city’s diverse LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) history. Out in Chicago is part of a continuing series about the city’s communities.

Items from the Kinsey Collection appearing in Out in Chicago include an Alfred Kinsey letter written on Chicago hotel stationery, an original drawing by Samuel Steward, and two of Steward’s cards for his Chicago tattoo business.

In Obscene Diary, the rich sexual documentation of one remarkable individual, a professor, tattoo artist, pornographer and sexual record keeper, Samuel Steward is unveiled. This exhibition features the most comprehensive group of artifacts from the Steward Archive that will ever be made available for public view and asks patrons to reflect on what it would look like if their own sexual histories were documented and what this would say about the times in which we live.

Items from the Kinsey Collection appearing in the exhibit include photographs and a watercolor album, as well as correspondence between Alfred Kinsey and Samuel Steward.

Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects.

The exhibit features one photograph from the Kinsey Documentary Collection. The exhibit was previously on display at The Tate Museum, London, UK from May 28 - October 3, 2010, and at the San Francisco Museum of Art from October 30, 2010 - April 17, 2011.

Carnegie Museum of Art presents the first exhibition in more than 50 years devoted to the visionary art of the brilliant and talented Andrey Avinoff (1884–1949), who believed that beauty will save the world. His exotic story, from the court of the Russian tsar to the mountains of Tibet, from an upstate New York dairy farm to the laboratories of Pittsburgh and the salons of Park Avenue, has never been told in full. Best known for his scientific research on butterflies, Avinoff created a rich body of weird, fantastical, symbolist watercolor paintings that express ideas about metamorphosis, transience, and change.

The exhibit includes 8 artworks by Andrey Avinoff from the Kinsey Institute art collection.

RUBBERS features artifacts that cover the gamut from vintage photographs of sexually transmitted diseases to military signage campaigning for the sexual safety of soldiers to a wide array of antique condoms, tins, and dispensers. Highlights of the exhibition include conceptual art pieces such as the cruel condom, a condom crafted entirely out of chainmail and covered with spikes and Franco B’s resin condom sculpture assembled from gritty used condoms taken from the floor and trash of the infamous FIST nightclub in London.

The exhibition also includes the marriage of function and fashion with the inclusion of Adriana Bertini’s couture condom cocktail dress, made from 1200 hand dyed condoms and fashioned after the Valentino dresses of the 1960s, trendy and contemporary condoms from renowned designers such as Marc Jacobs, as well as “condiments,” functional salt and pepper shakers designed and molded after condoms.

The exhibit features vintage condom containers and a few other items from the collection of The Kinsey Institute, as well as a display of condom use information provided by Dr. William Yarber, IU Professor and Kinsey Institute Research Fellow.

Featuring Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, George Platt Lynes, Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, and many more eminent artists from the late 19th century to the present day, this exhibition presents a rare and beautiful survey of homoerotic art. Groundbreaking in its scope, aim, and venue, this exhibition asserts a homosexual presence in Western Art since the Renaissance. "If this exhibition reveals more parts of the male anatomy than are usually seen in public exhibitions, it also reveals a need for recognition of and freedom of expression for homosexual artists." We invite visitors to join in this celebration of homosexual art history.

The exhibit features 20 photographs and artworks from the Kinsey Institute Collection. The exhibition also appeared at the Central Connecticut State University Art Gallery from March 18 - April 22nd, 2010.

This original exhibit, researched and created by Curator Craig Bruns and Seaport staff, features traditional and modern tattooing tools, flash (tattoo design samples) and other tattoo-related art, historic photographs and artifacts, a recreation of an old-time "tattoo parlor," and a mini-documentary of the recorded personal stories of tattooed sailors.

The exhibit includes a number of tattoo photographs from the collection of The Kinsey Institute.