Call for Papers: Eros in the Museum Acquiring, Exhibiting and Viewing Erotic Works of Art

Type: International conference
Deadline for proposals: 31 March 2026 
Conference date and venue: October 2026, Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin campus, Sciences Po, Paris

Rationale 

The museum is not merely a site of display; it is also a space in which the visibility and the value of works of art are constantly renegotiated. Following Walter M. Kendrick’s thesis – that images set aside because they were deemed unshowable paradoxically helped constitute pornography as an autonomous category – this conference seeks to explore the museum’s role in constructing and reconfiguring gendered ways of looking at objects connected with sexuality and/or desire (erotic and pornographic). As a public space where professionals and audiences meet, and where bodies of work from different periods and regions are brought into dialogue, the museum appears here as a privileged observation post.

Since the creation of the Gabinetto Segreto at the Naples Archaeological Museum in the early nineteenth century, several museums of eroticism – long-standing or short-lived – have emerged (Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, New York City, Mumbai…). Beyond institutions explicitly devoted to erotica, other public, private or community museums have confronted erotic works through temporary exhibitions, acquisitions or cataloguing decisions. In Europe, as well as in Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, museums have devised specific strategies for conserving, exhibiting or making invisible such representations. 

Over the last fifty years, interest in these questions within the humanities and social sciences has grown – from Studies in Erotic Art (1970), through Linda Williams’s Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989), to Jennifer Tyburczy’s Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display (2016) – before broadening their scope to gender and queer studies. These approaches have shown how museums contribute to the recognition – or exclusion – of certain sexual and gender identities, particularly LGBTQIA+, within public institutions.

Building on these insights, the conference seeks to open an international, transcultural and multidisciplinary discussion of eroticism in museums. How do institutions acquire, classify, exhibit or censor such works – whether objects, paintings, sculptures, photographs, performances, video or digital art? In particular, what role is played by curatorial selfcensorship undertaken in anticipation of audience or governmental reactions? What forms of mediation and display have been implemented (secret cabinets, shutters and drawers, virtual exhibitions)? How are the viewer’s body and gaze engaged by these images? Finally, can we build a critical history of their reception in relation to past and present thresholds of tolerance, bearing in mind artists’ strategies which often unsettle or outwit the museum?

Call for Papers 

We invite proposals from scholars across the humanities (art history, cultural and social history, law and legal history, philosophy, sociology, literary studies, etc.). 

Suggested themes (non-exhaustive)

Acquisition:

criteria and taboos guiding the inclusion (or exclusion) of erotic works in public or private collections; the “Enfers” of libraries.

Exhibition: 

scenography, devices and spatial arrangements, from Antiquity to the digital age. 

Actors: 

collectors, art dealers, curators, institutions, exhibition designers, conservators, the media, audiences.

Reception: 

critical responses and visitor experience, tools of mediation, digital circulation

Submission guidelines 

• Paper title. 
• Abstract (max. 2,000 characters): clearly stating the research objectives and the problem addressed, with a brief indicative bibliography. 
• Short biography: including academic background, research area and current status (institutional affiliation, research themes, etc.).
• Keywords: 3–5 terms summarising the proposed paper.

Proposals should be sent by 31 March 2026 to all three addresses:

• claire.maingon@u-bourgogne.fr 
• m.tauziedeespariat@parisnanterre.fr 
• thibault.boulvain@sciencespo.fr 

Submissions will be reviewed and selected by the organisers with the support of the Scientific Committee. Notifications are expected by 30 April 2026. Papers (30–40 minutes) may be delivered in French or English.

Organising Committee 

Claire MAINGON, professeur en histoire de l’art contemporain, Université Bourgogne Europe, membre du LIR3S. 
Maël TAUZIÈDE-ESPARIAT, maître de conférences en histoire de l’art des Temps modernes, Université Paris-X Nanterre, membre du HAR. 
Thibault BOULVAIN, Assistant Professor en histoire de l’art, Centre d’Histoire (CHSP), Paris.

Scientific Committee 

Olivier BONFAIT, professeur en histoire de l’art des Temps modernes, Université Bourgogne Europe (LIR3S), Institut universitaire de France. 
Damien DELILLE, maître de conférences en histoire de l'art contemporain à l'Université Lumière Lyon 2, conseiller scientifique à l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art. 
Arianna ESPOSITO, maîtresse de conférences en archéologie classique, Université BourgogneEurope (UMR 6298 ARTEHIS). 
Guillaume FAROULT, conservateur en chef, en charge des peintures françaises du XVIIIe siècle et des peintures britanniques et américaines, Musée du Louvre. 
Charlotte FOUCHER ZARMANIAN, chargée de recherches HDR au CNRS, directriceadjointe du Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (UMR 8566, CNRS-EHESS). 
Nadeije LANEYRIE DAGEN, professeure émérite en histoire de l’art des Temps modernes, ENS-PSL. 
Nicolas LIUCCI-GOUTNIKOV, conservateur au Musée national d’art moderne, directeur de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky, centre de recherche du Centre Pompidou.