Protected Beauty is a new Exhibit launched at Art Basel/Miami Art Week at the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami Beach. Presented in conjunction with The Kinsey Institute and Indiana University it examines some controversial ideas about masculine beauty and sexuality in art. 

On display are photographs, prints, drawings and paintings created between 1890 and 1982 by well-known gay artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul Cadmus, Andrey Avinoff, Michael Miksche, George Platt Lynes, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Pavel Tchelitchew and Marcel Vertes. Many of these works collected by the Kinsey Institute and curated by Rebecca Fasman are on display to the public for the first time.

“Because of overarching societal mores, the art world shunning gay artists, and the very real possibility of being fined and/or imprisoned under strict obscenity laws, the depiction of men as beautiful and desirable was nearly impossible to present to the public for a very long time,” said Fasman. “Many of the works in this exhibition came to the Kinsey Institute’s collection at a time when there were no other repositories that would accept work that presented male beauty outside of societally-accepted contexts.”

“This show is WEAM’s artistic and political statement at a time when intolerance and state repressions grow all over the world,” added Helmut Schuster,  the Museum’s director.

The exhibition is on view at WEAM, 1205 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, through March 1, 2017.

For details : visit weam.com