Museum of Sex Comes to Miami

By Issy Ronald and Oscar Holland, CNN

(CNN) -- Combining the profound and the playful, the Museum of Sex has become one of New York City's top-rated attractions on TripAdvisor since it opened in Manhattan in 2002.

Now the museum is coming to Miami, Florida, where a new outpost will house everything from "sexy robots" to an exhibition on the history of sexual health products.

Set to open this spring, the institution will occupy a vast 32,000-square-foot converted warehouse in Miami's Allapattah neighborhood, which is home to a growing number of art and design venues.

Courtesy of The Museum of Sex and Snøhetta

The museum's executive director and founder, Daniel Gluck, said in a statement that its inaugural program "embodies our ambitions to be a thought-provoking forum around sex and sexuality."

Set across three large gallery spaces, the opening exhibitions include a solo presentation by Hajime Sorayama, who has previous collaborated with Dior Men and Grammy Award-winning singer The Weeknd. The show features four of the Japanese artist's famous "sexy robot" sculptures, each standing over 9 feet tall, as well as 20 of his retro-futuristic erotic paintings.

Elsewhere, an exhibition titled "Modern Sex: 100 Years of Design and Decency" will examine how the promotion and perception of sexual health products have changed since the 1920s.

Courtesy of Museum of Sex

A permanent installation "Super Funland: Journey into the Erotic Carnival," was meanwhile designed with the help of artists and designers including the TV drag star RuPaul Charles. Among the installation's 20 "amusements" is a 40-foot-wide mermaid tank, according to a press release announcing the launch.

The museum was designed by Snøhetta, the Norwegian architecture firm behind New York's National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion and the ongoing expansion of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's performance hall. The repurposed warehouse, which is larger than the original New York museum, will also contain retail space and a bar.

Since opening its doors on Manhattan's 5th Avenue two decades ago, the Museum of Sex — also known as MoSex — has hosted more than 40 exhibitions "committed to preserving, presenting and celebrating the cultural significance of human sexuality." Presenting what it describes as "the best of current scholarship," recent exhibitions have examined issues ranging from abortion to sex work.

Hajime Sorayama's "Untitled" Courtesy The Museum of Sex

The museum's permanent collection contains over 20,000 artifacts and artworks, spanning photographs, costumes and historic sex toys. Gluck said the opening of an outpost in Miami, which is already home to an erotic art museum, marked a "major milestone" for the institution.

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