Exhibition and museum review

摘要

Sex sells, as museums know. And these are cash-strapped hyper-sexualised times. So it's logical that museums of all kinds are starting to put on displays about sex in order to draw in new visitors, especially younger people. Two sea transport museums have done so in the last few years. Belgium's Oostduinkerke (East Dunkirk) NAVIGO, the National Fisheries Museum showed Zeerotica. About love and passion on the coast, in 2011. The four major topics were the 'sensual sea' (shellfish as aphrodisiacs); mermaids; the sea monster Roesschaert and tattoos; and historic nudity in Belgian coastal resorts. It was about the contents of the sea, and about practices on its margins by a range of people, not only seafarers.