New Acquisitions On View At The Museum Of Sex, NYC Including Zoya Cherkassky's New Series 'Women Who Work'

The Museum of Sex, NYC has announced that as of September 1, 2021, Zoya Cherkassky's drawing "Untitled" from her "Women Who Work" series and Louis Soubrier's Siège D'Amour Love Chair will be on view in the second floor exhibition "Artifact [xx]: Selections from Secret Collections." The Museum recently acquired the chair from M S Rau LLC, New Orleans and the drawing from Fort Gansevoort Gallery, NYC for the permanent collection.

Artist Zoya Cherkassky recently detoured from her usual practice to explore the topic of female sex work in a series called "Women Who Work." In this drawing, Cherkassky beautifully and hauntingly portrays the disassociation and alienation many women experience during sexual intercourse and intimacy. Inspired by the horrific story and subsequent Russian mythologization of Viktor Mokhov, who abducted two teenage girls in 2000 and held them hostage as enslaved sex workers for four years in a bunker, the drawing highlights the power dynamics, abuse and fear that can accompany sex and the sex work industry.

Specially designed in 1890 by French cabinet-maker Louis Soubrier for King Edward VII (1841-1910), the Prince of Wales and King of England from 1901 to 1910, who was also known as "Dirty Bertie," the love chair enabled the infamous playboy prince to partake in sexual amusement with minimal exertion in numerous ways, including with two ladies at once. Le Chabanais, one of the extravagant brothels of nineteenth and twentieth century Paris, kept the original chair in a private room for the future king's personal use. While the exact chair used by "Dirty Bertie" is now owned by Soubrier's great-grandson, the example on view at the Museum of Sex is one of just two replicas based on the original design. The only other known replica is on view at the Sex Machines Museum in Prague. The chair has been featured in both BBC and Smithsonian documentaries such as the "Private Lives of Monarchs."

As part of the rotation of new objects into "Artifact [xx]," the Museum has also recently hung Keith Haring's "Bad Boys" (1986), a set of 6 framed silkscreen prints on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation until February 2022. The exhibition also features objects on loan from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University Bloomington, Stanley B. Burns, MD Collection & Archive and the Dittrick Medical History Center at the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.

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