Take a look at the overview below and check it out! It was a pleasure working with Justin Spring, who spent 10 years of his life dedicated to this incredible project. I'm so happy we were able to bring both the book and collection to life at the Museum of Sex
In Obscene Diary, the rich sexual documentation of one remarkable individual, a professor, tattoo artist, pornographer and sexual record keeper, Samuel Steward will be unveiled. Steward’s self documentation included a catalogue of every partner and sex act, illustrated through photos, diary entries, sexual record keeping, explicit drawings and erotic literary musings.
Recovered from a San Francisco attic in 2001, Samuel Steward’s preserved archive recently formed the basis of the widely acclaimed biography, SECRETHISTORIAN: THELIFE,ANDTIMES OF SAMUELSTEWARD, PROFESSOR, TATTOOARTIST, ANDSEXUALRENEGADE**, which was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award. The biography provides an amazing portrait of not only Samuel Steward, but of an entire generation of men who lived in the years before Stonewall, when it was dangerous to be openly homosexual. Presented to the public for the first and only time before its donation to a special collections library, the Steward Archive makes up the core of the exhibition Obscene Diary: The Secret Archive of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Pornographer launching at the Museum of Sex on July 14, 2011.
This exhibition features the most comprehensive group of artifacts from the Steward Archive that will ever be made available for public view and asks patrons to reflect on what it would look like if their own sexual histories were documented and what this would say about the times in which we live.