Secretum (room)
The Secretum or secret museum was a section of the British Museum 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 the Statue of Tara which was hidden for thirty years from the 1830s.Episode 54 - Statue of Tara 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 Obscene Publications Act of 1857. From the 1960s onwards, the artifacts were removed from this special collection and incorpora ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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British Museum Asia 45
British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles * Celtic Britons, an ancient ethno-linguistic group * Brittonic languages, a branch of the Insular Celtic language family (formerly called British) ** Common Brittonic, an ancient language Other uses *''Brit(ish)'', a 2018 memoir by Afua Hirsch *People or things associated with: ** Great Britain, an island ** United Kingdom, a sovereign state ** Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) ** United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922) See also * Terminology of the British Isles * Alternative names for the British * English (other) * Britannic (other) * British Isles * Brit (other) * Briton (d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. The museum was established in 1753, largely b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Statue 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 British Museum in 1830 by the former British Governor of Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known), Robert Brownrigg. Background Buddhism has had a continuous history on the island of Sri Lanka ever since the third century BC. The figure dates to the period of Anuradhapura Kingdom founded in 377 BC by King Pandukabhaya. Buddhism played a strong role in the Anuradhapura period, influencing its culture, laws, and methods of governance. Tara shows evidence of the cultural interaction of Buddhism with Hinduism. Tara had been a Hindu mother goddess but was redesigned for a new role within Buddhism. Sri Lanka today is predominantly Theravada Buddhist country. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 Justice Cockburn, in ''Regina v. Hicklin'', now known as the Hicklin test. Timeline of legislation There have been several Acts of Parliament of this name: * Obscene Publications Act 1857 * Obscene Publications Act 1959 * Obscene Publications Act 1964 Of these, only the 1959 and 1964 acts are still in force in England and Wales, as amended by more recent legislation. They define the legal bounds of obscenity in England and Wales, and are used to enforce the removal of obscene material. Irish law diverged from English law in 1929, replacing the OPA 1857 with a new Irish act. Key cases under the Obscene Publications Act Scottish prohibitions on obscene material are to be found in section 51 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 any artistic form to depict erotic content, including painting, sculpture, drama, film or music. Erotic literature and erotic photography have become genres in their own right. Erotica also exists in a number of subgenres including gay erotica, lesbian erotica, women's erotica, bondage erotica, monster erotica and tentacle erotica. Curiosa are curiosities or rarities, especially unusual or erotic books. In the antiquarian book trade, pornographic works are often listed under "curiosa", "erotica" or "facetiae". Erotica and pornography A distinction is often made between erotica and pornography (and the lesser-known genre of sexual entertainment, ribaldry), although some viewers may not distinguish between them. A key distinction, some hav ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Witt (collector)
George Witt Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (25 March 1804 – 20 February 1869) was a doctor, banker and mayor known for his collection of erotic objects. Life George Witt was born at Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire, the fifth son of Matthew Witt, a farmer, and Sarah (née Woollard). He was baptised on 23 May 1805, at the Anglican St. Mary's Church, Swaffham Prior. Witt studied to become a physician at Northampton General Hospital, Northampton General Infirmary before he worked briefly for the East India Company. He notably took charge of a cholera epidemic on board a ship at Calcutta. He became a surgeon at Bedford Infirmary from where he visited Leiden for just three months. Based on his work in Calcutta he graduated as a Doctor of Medicine at the University.David Gaimster, Witt, George (1804–1869), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2010, accessed 27 July 2014 Witt married Elizabeth Hedley in Bedford in 1832. He practise ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Warren Cup
The Warren Cup is an ancient Greco-Roman silver drinking cup decorated in relief with two images of male same-sex acts. It was purchased by the British Museum for £1.8 million in 1999, the most expensive single purchase by the museum at that time. It is usually dated to the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (1st century AD). The cup is named after its first modern owner, the American Edward Perry Warren, notable for his art collection, which also included the marble version of Rodin's '' The Kiss'', now in Tate Modern, and an ''Adam and Eve'' by Lucas Cranach the Elder, now in the Courtauld Institute of Art, both also in London. Imagery Representations of sexual acts are widely found in Roman art, although surviving male-female scenes greatly outnumber same-sex couples. It cannot be assumed that homoerotic art was uncommon as the modern record may be biased due to selective destruction or non-publication of pederastic works in later times. Illustrated drinking cups, o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wolfenden Report
The Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (better known as the Wolfenden report, after Sir John Wolfenden, the chairman of the committee) was published in the United Kingdom on 4 September 1957 after a succession of well-known men, including Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, John Gielgud, and Peter Wildeblood were convicted of homosexual offences. Background Under the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, any homosexual activity between males was illegal. After the Second World War, there had been an increase in arrests and prosecutions, and by the end of 1954, in England and Wales, there were 1,069 men in prison for homosexual acts, with a mean age of 37 years. During a time of several significant trials, notably that of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the Conservative government set up a departmental committee (in the Home Office and Scottish Home Department responsible for criminal law) under Sir John Wolfenden to consider both ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Sex Museums
A sex museum is a museum that displays erotic art, historical sexual aids, and documents on the history of erotica. They were popular in Europe at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, the era of the sexual revolution. Since the 1990s, these museums are often called erotic museums or erotic art museums instead of sex museums. Asia *The first sex museum in China opened in 1999 in the center of Shanghai; in 2001 it moved to the outskirts of the city. It was variously called "Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture" or "Dalin Cultural Exhibition" after its founder, sexologist Dr. Liu Dalin. In early 2004 it moved again, to Tong Li, and is now known as the China Sex Museum, with over three thousand erotic artifacts. *India's first sex museum opened in Mumbai (Bombay) in 2002. *South Korea's first sex museum, Asia Eros Museum, opened in the Insadong neighborhood in Seoul in 2003. The museum has since closed. After a five-year legal battle, private collector Kim Whan Bae opened t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material. From its foundation in the eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, seditious publications, those subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous. From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the material was restricted, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Secret Museum, Naples
The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet ( it, Gabinetto Segreto) in Naples refers to the collection of 1st-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, now held in separate galleries at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the former Museo Borbonico. The term "cabinet" is used in reference to the " cabinet of curiosities" - i.e. any well-presented collection of objects to admire and study. Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly 100 years, the secret room was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been kept in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artifacts were classified through a new method of taxonomy, those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography and in 1821 they were locked away in a Secret Museum. Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sex Museums
A sex museum is a museum that displays erotic art, historical sexual aids, and documents on the history of erotica. They were popular in Europe at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, the era of the sexual revolution. Since the 1990s, these museums are often called erotic museums or erotic art museums instead of sex museums. Asia *The first sex museum in China opened in 1999 in the center of Shanghai; in 2001 it moved to the outskirts of the city. It was variously called "Museum of Ancient Chinese Sex Culture" or "Dalin Cultural Exhibition" after its founder, sexologist Dr. Liu Dalin. In early 2004 it moved again, to Tong Li, and is now known as the China Sex Museum, with over three thousand erotic artifacts. *India's first sex museum opened in Mumbai (Bombay) in 2002. *South Korea's first sex museum, Asia Eros Museum, opened in the Insadong neighborhood in Seoul in 2003. The museum has since closed. After a five-year legal battle, private collector Kim Whan Bae opene ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |