Plan
Haut de pageScientific coordination
Morwena Joly, Heritage Curator, Centre des monuments nationaux.
Annabel Poincheval, Creation Inspector, Direction générale de la Création artistique.
Call for proposals
The ambitions of the issue
Eroticism, and its heritage, are often relegated to the margins of cultural studies and art history, but today they seem worth a new look from the points of view of different disciplines. From the art of classical antiquity to contemporary works of creation, from under the counter literature to cult objects, from oral traditions to private archives, eroticism belongs to every century, leaving multiple traces which are sometimes hidden away, sometimes proudly displayed. This issue of In Situ sets out to look at issues of identification and acquisition, of forms of conservation, representation and transmission, all taking eroticism into account as heritage, a tangible heritage, an intangible one, or a symbolic or political one. So how does eroticism become heritage? Who are the people who share it, who are the guardians, the censors? Between memory, taboo and re-appropriation, what tensions are to be identified? How do places, narratives and works of eroticism belong to a collective memory or to counter-cultures rendered invisible? This issue sets out to explore eroticism in the light of familiar heritage problematics: archives, museums, tools of mediation, social practices, popular traditions and so on, up to and including the present day.
Presentation of the subject
Numerous artistic and cultural representations of eroticism – or eroticisms, in the plural – have recently aroused renewed interest: exhibitions, publications, special issues of journals, conferences and special study days recently organised for example by the Musée d’Orsay or the French national library. The world of creation is also concerned by this renewal of interest, and the eroticised body now features frequently in live performances and in the visual arts.
Eroticism – the expression or description of sexual feelings, especially in art and literature – is understood here to mean the use or evocation of the body for the aesthetic representation of sensual desire. The inspiration for the ambiguities, the imaginative worlds and the fantasies it involves varies of course over time and in different countries, but also according to cultural notions about modesty, about what is forbidden and what transgression means. In this issue of the review, then, we would like to address the ways eroticism becomes heritage and the ways works, objects and traces associated with the history of eroticism and its representations, in France and elsewhere, are shown and appreciated today. We hope to publish articles based on pluri-disciplinary approaches, mixing history, anthropology, art history, sociology, gender studies, queer studies, literature, law, museology, etc. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the areas that may be explored:
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eroticism and art history: representations, censorship, deviation
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places and spaces of the erotic heritage: museums, libraries, places of memory
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collectors and collections of what is called curiosa: how collections are built up, how they are kept, how they can be accessed
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memory of desire and seeing the body as heritage
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the erotic heritage of non-western societies held by European institutions
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eroticism, colonialism and post-colonial re-appropriations
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gender, sexuality and power in policies of heritage recognition and promotion
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contemporary practices: committed art, performance, militantism, queering heritage
The approaches may concern both tangible and intangible heritage, and thinking too about notions of heritage which is ‘off camera’, not usually seen as heritage. The appreciation and promotion of this heritage are caught in a paradox, between what is concealed and what is revealed, like the ‘enfer’ at the French national library or the private case at the British library, the sections of forbidden literature. Places, works, cultural properties, fixed or moving images can all be vectors of memory which needs to be protected for their sociological and cultural values.
Suggested themes
Axis n° 1 – The perception and recognition as heritage of places and decors associated with the history of eroticism, and the memory of these places and decors
How do societies go about recognising architectural forms and sculptures as heritage when they have erotic contents, taking into consideration issues of memory, sacredness, public visibility and moral normativity.
Here, it might be possible to look at the heritagisation and reception of representations associated with sexuality and its myths, such as the traces of priapic cults in Greco-Roman antiquity. The decoration of certain villas and public baths – frescoes, mosaics, statues – took the body and its pleasure as themes that were fully visible in the buildings.
Eroticism is to be found too in the architectural and painted decoration of medieval buildings and buildings throughout Europe from the Renaissance up to the early modern period. Many cathedrals and gothic churches (Reims or Autun, for example) and stately homes featured obscene or erotic figures carved into the capitals of columns, modillions, wooden misericords or gargoyles: genitals in full view, women crouching, grotesque scenes or scenes of ribaldry.
It is also necessary to look at the way eroticism in heritage has been rendered invisible in modern times. Since the Italian Renaissance the moral codification of public spaces has often involved the suppression or the ‘chaste’ restoration or removal of elements considered indecent. This ‘desexualisation ‘of monuments coincided with a certain sacralisation of heritage. Nude statues in public places, especially of women, have often given rise to controversy and their erotic charge can be reinterpreted according to variable codes of morality or national or colonial contexts. And in our own time, the presence of certain forms of eroticism in the public arena can set off polemics which are also worth studying.
Axis n° 2 The conservation, interpretation and promotion of works and cultural objects associated with eroticism
As a form of cultural and aesthetic expression, eroticism occupies an uncomfortable place in museum institutions. Although present through the centuries in different artistic and iconographical traditions, it is often treated with caution in exhibition spaces, or even hidden away. This partial marginalisation can be explained in terms of the constant tension between the interpretation and shared appreciation of heritage and the social perception of sexual desire as something belonging to the private sphere, or even being transgressive.
- 1 Four references here to particular exhibitions which have addressed this theme. ‘The Naked Truth’ ( (...)
In the history of western museum, eroticism was often disguised or euphemised in aesthetic categories such as ‘artistic nude’, ‘mythological scene’ or ‘academic study of the human body’. Many works with explicit erotic contents were simply excluded from public exhibitions, set aside or cordoned off to be presented in a didactic context intended to neutralise their potentially subversive charge. The institutional management of ways of seeing bears witness to a process of cultural regulation of desire within spaces supposedly devoted to the conservation and transmission of the artistic heritage.1
Nevertheless, since the end of the twentieth century, a gradual resetting of the relations between museography and eroticism can be observed. The creation for example, in Paris, Amsterdam and Barcelona, of museums specifically devoted to eroticism and the inclusion of erotic works in temporary thematic exhibitions are marks of a desire to give legitimacy to such works as aesthetic objects or objects of memory and of history. This evolution of course opens up new debate, giving rise to immediate questions about reception, censorship and contextualisation and also to further question about the hierarchy of different forms of heritage according to moral, social or gendered logics.
Eroticism thus presents contemporary museums with a double challenge. First of all, how to deal with it as heritage, how to archive, conserve, restore and exhibit objects or representations founded on desire, intimacy or sexuality? And secondly the challenge of mediation, how to make eroticism accessible to various publics without reducing it to simple aesthetics of nudity or anecdotal provocations? Such questions become particularly acute when approached though the prisms of gender or postcolonial studies which invite us to interrogate the social conditions of how the eroticism is produced, legitimised and exhibited in a museum.
The place of eroticism in the museum travels anew along the frontiers between art and obscenity, between knowledge and pleasure, between legitimation and subversion. It underlines the way in which cultural institutions participate in the social construction of ways of seeing, in the definition of what heritage is, and in the selections of objects worth keeping, passing on and showing. Concrete examples might be examined here, such as the secret cabinet of the archaeological museum of Naples, the furniture of Valtesse de La Bigne, held by the Paris museum of decorative arts, the Félicien-Rops museum at Namur, in Belgium, or the special sections in libraries devoted to collections of erotic reviews and photos.
This field of enquiry is an invitation to think about the museum not merely as a place of conservation, but also as an actor, active in the fabrication of sensitivity and of the memory of desire. Three different avenues to be considered:
How do museums negotiate the recognition of eroticism as heritage, between aesthetic legitimation, discursive neutralisation and the management of what is taboo? The question here involved the exploration of curatorial strategies adopted to show erotic works, and the tensions between this public visibility and moral or political constraints.
Should eroticism have a legitimate place as a part of heritage within ‘generalist’ museums or should it be confined to specialised and peripheral institutions? This question allows for an analysis of the place given to eroticism in so-called ‘classic’ museums, such as the Louvre, Orsay or the British Museum, versus alternative and communal venues.
What arrangements or devices in the museum can facilitate the representation of eroticism without reducing it to the aesthetics of nudes or a spectacle for voyeurs? Questions can be raised here about scenography, text and mediation and the role of language in shaping reception.
Axis n° 3 Heritage of eroticism and creation
Based on the assumption that creation and heritage are not antinomic, that contemporary works offer echoes both of the past and of the context in which they are created, contributors could question the evolution of how eroticism is perceived through the prism of creation.
Whether they are plastic, cinematographic or photographic (media now more than a hundred years old), contemporary works characterised by their eroticism all refer to codes, symbols and signs which are present in the collective imaginary transmitted by other works and other images. The realm of graphic novels and comics is also one that deserves exploration, through the works of various authors and artists in publications with contents classified as adult.
The power of eroticism also find expression in textile creations. The recent preoccupation with recognising these creations as heritage raises the question of how to make them visible to the public. Changing fashions accompany the evolution in our relations with the body and with its eroticization, particularly in women’s fashions which saw tremendous change during the twentieth century.
Axis n° 4 An intangible heritage to be discovered
Finally, then, both on stage and in the wings, eroticism cannot exist without reference to its own history, to the different form of heritage out of which it is constructed. Whether in striptease shows which mark the acceptance of nudity or in contemporary dress borrowing from classical wardrobes, the image is diverted towards the liberation of the body. In the field of choreography, the centrality of the body has given rise to a reinterpretation of heritage codes: the performance of classical ballets in erotic modes has helped shift the accepted codes of dance. Think too of the history of the French cancan (shortly to be labelled as intangible heritage), whose original subversive intentions have now merged into a popular and unprovocative erotic performance. In the cabaret, the evolution of the way genders and their representations are considered reflects the place of eroticism over time. The built heritage of certain theatres bears witness to the eroticization of this universe, where, in the theatre itself or between the stage and the auditorium, contacts are easily made, often anticipated and often clandestine.
Proposals
The contributions should comprise unpublished elements of research, of experimentation, of new hypotheses or old ones updated. The text cannot be that of an article which has already been published. We hope that the contributions will be generously illustrated, if necessary, with sound and/or audiovisual documents. The contribution could comprise or even consist in a video interview.
If you would like to make a contribution to this issue, please send us your proposal before 15 January 2026, in the form of a summary of 1 500 characters (maximum), accompanied by a brief CV.
To be sent to
insitu.patrimoines@culture.gouv.fr
or by post to :
Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
Direction générale des Patrimoines et de l’Architecture
Revue In Situ. Revue des patrimoines
182, rue Saint-Honoré
75001 Paris
à l’attention de Nathalie Meyer
Copies of your proposal should also be sent to
Morwena Joly-Parvex, morwena.joly-parvex@monuments-nationaux.fr
Annabel Poincheval, annabel.poincheval@culture.gouv.fr
The authors of proposals retained for the publication will be informed on 30 January 2026. The texts, of between 15 000 and 35 000 characters are to be sent by 15 June 2026.
Advice to authors concerning the number of pages, the number of pictures, copyright questions and indications on notes and links can be found at the site of the review
https://journals.openedition.org/insitu/32424
Bibliography
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Notes
1 Four references here to particular exhibitions which have addressed this theme. ‘The Naked Truth’ (Leopold Museum, Vienne, 2005); this was an exhibition of the ‘crudest’ works of Austrian expressionists from the beginning of the twentieth century. Entrance was free to visitors who turned up in their underwear or completely naked.
‘Masculin / Masculin. L’homme nu dans l’art de 1800 à nos jours’ (Musée d’Orsay, 2013–2014). This was a major exhibition which examined anew the place of the naked male body and its erotization in western art, drawing attention to the tensions associated with the (male) gaze, gender and sexuality, particularly in the context of museums more frequently displaying the female body.
‘Shunga : Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art’ (British Museum, 2013–2014), This exhibition devoted to erotic Japanese prints (shunga) gave rise to a debate about the exhibition of explicit works in a museum open to the general public. The museum chose to present the works with an important dose of historic and aesthetic contextualisation.
‘Amori divini. Miti greci di amori e trasformazioni’ (Naples, Musée archéologique, 2017). This was an exploration of the Greek myths of love and transformation, underlining the cases where gods or mortals undergo metamorphosis in order to conquer, or flee, the object of their desire.
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