Sexologist Annie Sprinkle discusses the relationship between altered consciousness and eroticism, and her role in a new museum exhibit exploring that union.
Good sex is often equated with reaching a higher level of consciousness. The same is routinely said about psychedelic drugs. So perhaps it’s only natural that some folks have been experimenting with the union of sex and psychedelics for decades, if not centuries. Through Sept. 19, the Museum of Sex in New York City, whose mission is to “preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality,” is hosting an exhibit exploring this combination.
The exhibit, Higher Love: The Psychedelic Roots of Modern Sexuality, showcases artifacts, scientific instruments and works of art to explore how chemically altered states have influenced sexuality throughout history and in modern society. Highlights from the dozens of contributors and exhibits include never-before-seen art from Dr. Oscar Janiger, a psychiatrist who studied the effects of LSD on creativity; a visual and auditory immersive installation by Ariana Papademetropoulos, which was inspired by erotica author Anaïs Nin’s documentation of her first supervised LSD experience; and three exhibits by museum board of advisors member/performer Annie Sprinkle, among other exhibits.
The inclusion of noted sexologist and performance artist Sprinkle is part of an overall effort to bring a female-centric thrust to the exhibition.
“This exhibition was shaped by a deliberate curatorial decision to center the voices of women—who are too often left out of dominant narratives around psychedelics in the U.S., especially in relation to sex and sexuality,” says Museum of Sex chief curator Ariel Plotek. “Annie has been a longtime advisor and ally to the Museum of Sex, and her essay ‘How Psychedelics Informed My Sex Life and Sex Work’ was one of the first things I read when we began developing this project. When our co-curator, Dr. Alex Dymock, brought up the role of radical feminists in the psychedelic movement, it became clear that Annie’s voice needed to be part of the exhibition.”
To learn more about the exhibit’s focus on the union of sexuality and psychedelics, we spoke with Sprinkle about the role of psychedelics in her own life and two of her exhibition contributions: a video excerpt from her film In Search of the Ultimate Sexual Experience (from Candida Royalle’s collection Rites of Passion, 1987) and a psychedelic monoprint titled “Tit Print” (2001).
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