The 70-year-old grandmother had collected fine antiques for decades. And when her son requested that she select a few naughtier baubles for his apartment, Wilzig responded by purchasing a Japanese pillow book or shunga -- 25 brilliantly colored pictures depicting the more carnal of delights. "It was historically given to couples on their wedding night," explains Wilzig. "It contains illustrations of various positions so they would know how to please each other."

Wilzig was raised, and has lived, as an Orthodox Jew for most of her life, yet this did little to deter both mother and son from their seemingly brazen exchange. "He knew I was a liberal thinker, and there's nothing we can't discuss," she adds. "I took it as a compliment."

Thirteen years later, her first purchase of erotica has morphed into a life's work. On Sunday, Wilzig will open the World Erotic Art Museum on Miami Beach, a collection of approximately 4,000 objects and antiquities dating to as early as 200 B.C. and hailing from lands as distant as Asia, Africa and India. Wilzig's private collection, which she claims is valued at some $10 million, swings from classical to kitsch.

So it is that patrons will find bronze and pewter interpretations of the myth of Zeus and Leda neighboring pop-culture fare, such as the giant -- and literally rocking -- male member used by Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. As yet it is uncertain whether the latter object, fashioned from fiberglass, will show as a hands-on piece.

"All erotic art is fine art," explains Wilzig about the collection she transported in its entirety earlier this year from her home in the Tampa Bay area.

She recently moved to a home a mere dozen blocks from the museum. "It's all beautiful, the oil paintings, lithographs, pewters and porcelains. It's fine art with a sexual message."

Certainly renowned artists of all media have addressed erotica: Picasso with his gravures, Gustav Klimt's drawings, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and the almost touchable realities of photographer Nan Goldin come to mind.

Wilzig possesses no such famed artists in her collection, and actually notes that most of her works are unsigned because erotic artists of the past and present prefer to forgo the crass or even commercial stigma attached to the genre. An 8-foot bronze sculpture she commissioned for visitor photo ops, for example, will be completed by the artist on the condition that he remain anonymous.

As surreptitious as erotic art can be, Wilzig is adamant about it differing from the kind of pornography one might find stashed behind the counter of the corner convenience store. "Pornography only gives the message, `Let's have sex,'" says Wilzig. "Erotic art makes you think of the talent of the artist, the beauty of the piece, the message intended. It makes you think about the whole process."

"Sex is something never to be ignored, certainly, I guess you just never know who's seeing these objects," muses Michael Hughes, visitor services manager at the nearby Bass Museum of Art. "If [the collection] is looking back at thousands of years in art, it's a legitimate way for artists to present themselves. If there's a nudist sculptural piece from the Roman era, was it blasphemy or was it accepted? That would be an interesting way of looking at these pieces. But the proof will be in the pudding."

Aside from the Bass and Wilzig's offering, South Beach boasts two other museums: the Sanford L. Ziff Jewish Museum and the Wolfsonian-FIU. Last spring Wilzig appeared before the Miami Beach Planning Board so she could add her institution to the roster. Since then, she's worked with the city's cultural director, historic preservation board and chamber of commerce. In the weeks before her museum opens for business, she's been making last-minute tweaks to her exhibits and organizing a library of more than 250 erotic art tomes, four of which Wilzig authored herself.

She also was preparing for the High Holy Days, buying honey and apples, candles to light to welcome the New Year.

She reconciles her faith and her work with an earthy panache. "I was a little apprehensive about telling my dear family rabbi of 40 years, but when I finally got the guts to tell him, he told me `Naomi, you're a smart woman, I always knew you'd do something important.'"

More ...

Grandmother Opens Erotic Art Museum

Knight Ridder, 10/16/05 - Naomi Wilzig peered through her wire-rimmed glasses looking for the ménage à trois.

"Where's the bronze figurine?" demanded the Jewish grandmother, as she feverishly labored to ready her unlikely creation, South Beach's World Erotic Art Museum. "It's small, with two men and a woman in the middle. It should be here."

Two workers scurried off to find it.

For the past 13 years, Wilzig, 70, has scoured markets and antique shops from Paris to St. Petersburg to amass a 4,000-piece collection that includes Kama Sutra temple carvings from India, peekaboo Victorian figurines who flash their behinds and a prop from the sado-sexual thriller "A Clockwork Orange."

Today, her late-life love child opens to the public.

"I decided it was something that should be made public so that others could enjoy it and realize there is a genre of art called erotic art," she explained.

The museum marches through humanity's sexual history, a tale told through objects as varied as the acts they depict.

"Why should these things be hidden?" Wilzig said. "It's how everyone got here, so why should we be embarrassed?"

Her foray into erotic art began when her son Ivan asked her to find a few pieces for his new Manhattan apartment.

At first, she didn't know what he was talking about.

Back then, Wilzig — a banker's wife and charity maven in Clifton, N.J. — avidly collected more mundane antiques, namely costume jewelry, Victorian card cases and Royal Worcester porcelain.

"I didn't even know what erotic art was," she said.

Nonetheless, she added it to her shopping list.

At first, she had little success.

Empty-handed, she finally asked an antique dealer for information. His response: Dealers don't put them out because they're afraid to offend people. "He told me I had to ask for it," she recalled.

So she did.

It was at an antique shop in St. Petersburg, Fla. The proprietor climbed a ladder and reached behind the decorative crown piece of a tall wooden cabinet to remove the hidden book. He clutched it to his chest.

The 18th-century Japanese pillow book, made of rice paper bound on silk, bore 24 hand-painted images of couples in rapturous sexual poses. Half wore opulent robes; the others wore the garments of peasants.

Such books were as practical as they were beautiful: Traditionally, they were given to newlyweds on their wedding nights to show how they should pleasure each other.

So began the odyssey, one that took Wilzig across borders and past her own boundaries.

As she became an experienced collector, Wilzig refined her technique. Her first buying trip to Paris was a bust — she couldn't communicate with the dealers. On her next trip, she wore a piece of cardboard around her neck. On it was printed: Je cherche de l'art erotique.

The strategy worked so well that she had a sign made out of black plastic emblazoned with "Buying Erotica." She wears it on every buying trip in the United States.

"She's really a maverick," said Dr. Laura Henkel, an associate professor in the budding field of erotology, or study of erotic art, at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. "I've been hearing about her for years, because there are very few women who have a private collection as extensive as hers, and even less who are willing to show it."

But Wilzig is not only willing to show it, she's completely financing the Miami Beach museum that will hold the multimillion-dollar collection — one that Henkel says is among the largest in the country.

Henkel is an assistant curator on a project to open an erotic art museum in Las Vegas, which will join Wilzig's museum in adding to the growing cadre of such institutions, including Paris' Musée de l'Erotisme, Berlin's Beate Uhse Erotik-Museum and New York's Museum of Sex.

This page contains copyrighted material and is made available to better understand pornography, e.g., its effect on society. It is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in receiving the information for research and educational purposes.