Audio Interview, Janice Epp, August 8, 1974

  • BRUCE JEWELL: The Erotic Museum, San Francisco, California.
  • Interview with Janice Epp.
  • Janice, this museum is, I guess, the first museum
  • of erotic art in the United States.
  • JANICE EPP: Yes, in the world.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: In the world.
  • JANICE EPP: Um-hm.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: It's clearly quite different than the kind
  • of erotica that you see in most cities.
  • What I've seen in the movie houses
  • and the porny bookstores is all is all kind of depressing.
  • This doesn't have that depressing, dehumanized feeling
  • about it, seems to me.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • The whole purpose of the museum, aside
  • from the obvious enjoyment of seeing people making love,
  • is to humanize to show that we are all sexual beings.
  • We all have various basic feelings about us,
  • and there's a great need now to take sex out
  • of the area of dehumanization somewhat like you would
  • see in the commercial films, commercial bookstores,
  • and so on and so forth to put it back
  • in the sphere of being a loving lifestyle and something that is
  • very necessary for all of us.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I kind of I've often
  • felt a bit like a little old lady in regards to pornography.
  • I was telling you earlier the story of my going
  • into a movie theater in Rochester and unaware
  • that it was a pornographic film and fifteen minutes later
  • getting up and demanding my money back,
  • I was so put off by it.
  • And I'm sometimes almost embarrassed
  • to admit to an attitude like that
  • because it seems so uncool.
  • But I do have that feeling about most pornography,
  • that there's definitely something about it which
  • doesn't encompass my experience of sex and offends me somehow.
  • JANICE EPP: Oh, I would say that that
  • would be a normal reaction, because most
  • of us through our lives, the experiences that we've
  • had with sex have hopefully been very positive and loving.
  • And certainly commercial pornography
  • does not depict that side of sex that most of us
  • associate it with.
  • To associate sex with violence, with dehumanized feelings,
  • just a sort of an automatic response
  • is taking it back fifty years or one-hundred years.
  • And we have to put the love back into it the communication
  • and the feeling.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Could you tell me how this museum got its start?
  • JANICE EPP: Yes.
  • The museum is an educational function
  • of Genesis Church and Ecumenical Center.
  • And Genesis, as its name implied,
  • is involved with beginnings.
  • We have felt for a long time that most churches were
  • neglecting two very important areas of human experience:
  • art and sexuality.
  • So the church was formed to bring sex education
  • to the public and also, hopefully,
  • to subsidize and help artists bring their work to everyone
  • and take art out of the sphere of the wealthy,
  • the upper classes.
  • And the National Sex Forum, which
  • is the major program of the church,
  • was organized to facilitate sex education,
  • to educate professionals people who are doing therapy, people
  • who would have occasion to counsel
  • people on sexual dysfunctiona.
  • And the collection, the Kronhausen Collection
  • which is the permanent collection of the museum,
  • was bought from Doctors Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, who
  • are two psychologists who have done an awful lot of work
  • in sex therapy and who spent the better part of twenty
  • years amassing this collection in their travels
  • all around the world.
  • And the Kronhausen's staged two very successful exhibitions
  • of a part of this collection in Sweden and Denmark,
  • and it was received so well that they
  • decided that Europeans really didn't need any more education.
  • Europeans have a pretty good attitude towards sex,
  • especially in Scandinavia.
  • And they felt--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Yes.
  • JANICE EPP: --both of them being Americans,
  • they felt that America was really the place that
  • needed this collection.
  • So they came to the United States
  • with the idea of giving the collection
  • to one of the major museums.
  • And all of the museums were approached,
  • and for various reasons, mostly dealing
  • with boards of directors who are notoriously conservative,
  • there was not a museum at that time who felt that they could
  • stage an exhibition of the art.
  • So the Kronhausens came to San Francisco,
  • feeling that San Francisco would be the city in the United
  • States that would provide the best
  • atmosphere for the collection.
  • And by happy coincidence, the church
  • was trying to make inroads in the areas of sex education
  • and the arts, andm of course, the collection of erotic art
  • combines both those areas.
  • So we have bought the collection from the Kronhausens,
  • and it is now permanently housed here in the museum,
  • and is a major part of the church's educational programs.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: The collection includes, really,
  • some of the finest erotic art available, it seems to me.
  • There's Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern art, as well as Picasso
  • and other big-name Western artists involved.
  • So the whole level of the enterprise is unique.
  • It's just very rare that you see anything like this.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I remember out at the San Francisco
  • out at the de Young, they had a Greek pot,
  • and it had showed a man with an erection on it.
  • And the pot had been carefully turned--
  • JANICE EPP: Turned around.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --turned around and turned to the wall.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • Right.
  • Well, this has been the tradition in museums.
  • Again, there is much fine erotic art available in the world
  • because erotic art has been around for as long
  • as man has been around as a valid expression.
  • And it's always been in the realm of the upper classes,
  • the privileged.
  • And to bring to my way of thinking,
  • to bring this very fine art to the people
  • is revolutionary because of the fact
  • that this is one of the last areas, the last frontiers,
  • of democratization in the arts.
  • The collection is the largest collection
  • in the world of erotic art.
  • The Japanese Collection alone, which
  • really is the sort of flower of the collection,
  • is the largest collection outside of Japan
  • and is the only collection that's available for people
  • to see.
  • We have just masses of people from Japan
  • who come here because they can't see this art in Japan.
  • It's very heavily censored.
  • And the scrolls that we have were done by Japan's greatest
  • masters during their great Classical Period, 1600 to 1850.
  • Quite a few of the Japanese masters,
  • about forty percent of their work was erotic at that time.
  • And so for the Japanese people to be able to come and see
  • their Rembrandts, their Picassos, their Dalis, where
  • they can't see it in Japan, it's really incredible.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I gather the Japanese have given a very
  • enthusiastic reception to--
  • JANICE EPP: Oh, yes, definitely.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --this.
  • How has the reception been from the wider community?
  • JANICE EPP: The reception has been amazing.
  • In the year and a half that we've been open,
  • I have yet to experience a negative feeling from anyone.
  • When we first opened, our feeling
  • was that mostly the people who came here
  • would be, say, twenty to thirty, into an alternative lifestyle,
  • that type of thing.
  • And we were totally surprised to find
  • that the average visitor to the museum
  • is a couple man and a woman in their forties
  • and fifties from, say, Iowa people who
  • come to San Francisco and leave their hometown behind and want
  • to have a unique experience in this city.
  • And perhaps will because of the fact
  • that they're not with their normal friends and their peers
  • and they don't have to worry about keeping up appearances
  • they will come to the museum as a part of the total experience
  • of being in San Francisco.
  • And the reaction has just been overwhelming.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah, I was kind of delighted yesterday
  • when I was here.
  • There was a woman, I would say fifty, fifty-five years old,
  • a rather matronly-looking woman, who was checking out some films
  • and buying some books and taking them and using them
  • in conjunction with some college course she was with.
  • And it was really a it was good to see that.
  • JANICE EPP: Definitely.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Sometimes older people
  • aren't even supposed to be interested in sex.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And I was happy--
  • JANICE EPP: Yeah, this is the thing.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --to see this kind of response.
  • JANICE EPP: Young people, although they come here
  • obviously for enjoyment and education,
  • have a lot going for them anyway.
  • They've grown up in a different generation.
  • There isn't the need to overcome certain attitudes.
  • And so when people come here that are in their forties
  • and fifties and open their minds and accept and enjoy this,
  • to me, is really where the museum
  • should be in terms of reaching out to people.
  • And the fact that we've been able to reach
  • a lot of these people just makes it all worthwhile.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: You're also producing or distributing,
  • I don't know which, films of various types
  • of sexual lifestyles.
  • Yesterday I saw two films, one was a young heterosexual couple
  • at the beach, and the other was also a heterosexual couple,
  • but the man was paraplegic.
  • JANICE EPP: Right, right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And they were both they were both erotic films,
  • and I thought both very beautifully done.
  • I didn't--
  • JANICE EPP: Yeah, we produce and direct and distribute
  • educational erotic films, as opposed to commercial films.
  • These films are not released to the general public.
  • They are released only to qualified professionals, anyone
  • in the therapy fields or the education fields.
  • The films--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: That makes me a little sad in a way,
  • because they're the only erotic films I've ever seen--
  • JANICE EPP: That are human.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --that are human.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • Right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: The people in them, I think,
  • were having affectionate relationships with one another.
  • And it was very it was just very human.
  • It's sex as I think most people know it,
  • at least I hope they know it that way.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • Well, originally, the films were only shown to professionals.
  • And a professional, for instance,
  • could rent out the film and show it to a class or a group
  • in a community center.
  • We found the response to the films
  • to be so positive that we decided
  • that, under the auspices of the museum and the National Sex
  • Forum, we would include daily film
  • showings as a part of the museum experience.
  • So now anyone who comes to the museum can see the films.
  • They are produced for educational purposes.
  • And since we are a nonprofit, they are not commercial.
  • They are not shown for money, because then you
  • get into a whole other sphere.
  • Enough people are making commercial films.
  • But it is rather sad, as you say,
  • that everyone can't see these films.
  • Although quite a lot more people than you would think
  • have seen them because they're distributed all over the world.
  • And anyone who would have an occasion
  • to go to a community center or be involved in a sex education
  • program or a therapy program would probably
  • have seen one of our films.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: You produced a gay film.
  • Could you tell me the range of films you have produced?
  • I believe I've seen the gay film in Rochester,
  • as a matter of fact.
  • JANICE EPP: The films deal with or just
  • run a whole gamut of sexual experience and lifestyles.
  • Everything from heterosexual couples
  • to sex for people with physical dysfunctions, handicaps, so on,
  • gay women, gay men, sex in the elderly we have films of people
  • past sixty communicating with your children about sex,
  • masturbation, massage, just everything
  • that you can possibly think of.
  • Quite a few of them are what we call pattern films, where
  • we show a couple in their home, spending the day together,
  • maybe cooking a meal and making love, walking on the beach.
  • There are also panel discussion films
  • dealing with various subjects.
  • And some clinical, physiological films, also.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I think Dr. Reuben should come and see your films.
  • JANICE EPP: As a matter of fact, Dr. Reuben was here.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Oh, was he really?
  • JANICE EPP: About a month ago, yes.
  • He came into the museum and was given a tour.
  • It was kind of funny.
  • His reaction to everything was, "Oh, I've seen that before."
  • And so he sort of spent twenty minutes walking around.
  • And I gathered that he was on a whirlwind tour of the city
  • and came in and wasn't about to let on that there was anything
  • that he didn't know about.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: He's certainly grossly
  • ignorant about homosexuals--
  • JANICE EPP: Um-hm.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --while pretending great expertise.
  • And I've heard similar complaints
  • about certain aspects of his heterosexual--
  • JANICE EPP: I would say that--
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --descriptions.
  • JANICE EPP: --my personal opinion
  • is that he's grossly ignorant about everything sexual.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Yeah.
  • JANICE EPP: This type of writing and this type of therapy
  • is not really doing the world much good.
  • It's scratching the surface and giving out
  • a lot of misinformation.
  • And like you say, I wish he had been
  • able to see some of our films, but I
  • suspect his attitude would have been,
  • "I've seen all this before."
  • BRUCE JEWELL: You have forums and so on.
  • Do you get many professional people?
  • This is of concern to me because I've, of course, heard
  • doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists
  • talking about homosexuality.
  • And I don't know where they got their information,
  • but they didn't they clearly were uninformed.
  • They were clearly ignorant of their subject
  • and presenting presenting themselves as experts.
  • Do many are many professionals coming here for the kind of--
  • JANICE EPP: Yes.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --education that you can offer?
  • JANICE EPP: Originally, the courses and forums
  • were open only to professionals, like the films.
  • What has happened now is that the public response,
  • if I can use the word "lay person,"
  • has been so positive that we've now opened up
  • the courses and forums to everyone.
  • But I would say that 75 percent are professional people.
  • This is where our main thrust is,
  • because these are the people that we go to
  • with our problems.
  • And if they don't have the correct information,
  • if they don't have open attitudes, then we're all lost.
  • If I am, for instance, a gay woman with two children
  • and have been married for ten years and suddenly realize that
  • I cannot continue with the charade any longer,
  • and I go to someone for therapy and their attitude is that,
  • you know, you have a lovely home and two lovely children
  • and a wonderful husband, and what's this about being
  • attracted to women?
  • I'm lost.
  • There's no place to go.
  • So the professional people have got to be educated.
  • They have to be opened up to seeing
  • things for what they are.
  • That all lifestyles, if they're chosen by someone,
  • as long as you're not hurting anyone else, they're valid.
  • They're loving.
  • They're just as intense and committed as any lifestyle is.
  • And for someone to say that a homosexual relationship is not
  • as valid and binding and loving as a heterosexual relationship
  • is just taking us all back to the Stone Age.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Um-hm.
  • You haven't had any really negative reactions
  • from the public about this.
  • JANICE EPP: No, not as far as I know.
  • Now, obviously, people who come here,
  • they see the sign on the door.
  • They know what the museum's all about.
  • So they have a certain attitude to begin with,
  • but they may not know exactly what to expect.
  • But when I walk around the museum
  • and see couples of all ages chuckling and smiling
  • and talking to each other and walking around and feeling very
  • comfortable, it sort of bears out the fact that, you know,
  • there have been no negative responses.
  • It's pretty hard to be negative in a place like this.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Well, the whole environment
  • is so strikingly different than the usual,
  • let's say, bookstore that you walk into.
  • It has an almost medicinal white all over the places,
  • and there's some guy sitting elevated
  • above the floor like some old-fashioned disciplinarian,
  • I almost feel.
  • And all the material is covered in cellophane and selling
  • at fantastically (Janice laughs) inflated prices.
  • And you have these the amazing thing to me
  • is these sexual apparatus, these pink, semi-plastic gadgets
  • laying around looking quite lonely there.
  • And this doesn't have that feeling at all.
  • JANICE EPP: No.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: This isn't that kind of--
  • JANICE EPP: No.
  • We've tried to, and hopefully succeeded,
  • in creating an atmosphere of comfort and acceptance
  • and love and friendliness about the museum
  • and all of our activities, so that people can come here
  • to sort of get back to basics and get back to real feelings.
  • And the message would be, if I could say anything about,
  • you know to people when they come in is,
  • come in and enjoy yourself and talk to us and come sit down
  • and have a cup of coffee and just feel good.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Well, the art has something to do with that,
  • I think.
  • The Japanese art has a kind of joy about it.
  • It's a gleeful presentation.
  • The Indian art is very formal.
  • I have that--
  • JANICE EPP: Right, very stylized.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --strange feeling of formality,
  • as if they were involved in some kind of exercise.
  • But it's not there's no shame connected with it.
  • JANICE EPP: Right, right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And the Western art
  • comes in many different styles and senses about it.
  • JANICE EPP: Everything from deep, intense feelings
  • to social satire and humor.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Right.
  • JANICE EPP: The whole gamut of the artistic experience.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I noted that there's very little gay art.
  • And my experience has been that I simply
  • haven't found very much of it around that I would
  • call worth putting on the wall.
  • JANICE EPP: This has been something
  • that we've been working on now for over a year is appealing
  • to the gay community through various magazines and media.
  • There is gay art around, but there are not
  • yet enough artists who are committed enough
  • to their lifestyle to go public.
  • I would say that there are quite a few artists who have probably
  • done things with a gay theme, but are not yet willing,
  • for various reasons, to have them hung with their names
  • on them.
  • We have some gay art, and we have a lot more now
  • than we did a year ago, because San Francisco has
  • a large gay population, and people are beginning
  • to come out a lot more here.
  • But this has been a major concern of ours,
  • that we would like to be able to represent everyone.
  • And since our population here in San Francisco
  • includes quite a large gay population,
  • and all over the world there is quite a large gay population,
  • we'd like to have a much bigger representation.
  • And lately, in about the past three months,
  • there have been a lot more artists coming in,
  • a lot of straight artists, who do works with a gay theme.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Oh, really?
  • JANICE EPP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Lesbian scenes or--
  • JANICE EPP: Yeah.
  • Well, of course, there's always been, in terms
  • of appealing to men, a lot of lesbian scenes done
  • by straight, gay men.
  • But that's not really very valid in terms of experience.
  • But a lot of straight men have been
  • doing art in which, as part of the portrayal,
  • there are men together, as well as women and men
  • with women and so on.
  • So the barriers are breaking down.
  • It takes time, like everything, the old cliche.
  • But our hope is eventually to have at least twenty percent
  • of the collection as being gay.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I have the feeling that you're looking forward
  • to a different day than the one we now live in,
  • that if you're educating people, you're educating them
  • for something, for some goal.
  • JANICE EPP: Right.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: What do you look forward to?
  • What would you like to see happening with this museum,
  • with your educational enterprise, and with people?
  • How would you like to relate, to be able to relate
  • to people in that sphere?
  • JANICE EPP: Well, speaking for myself,
  • I would say that my hope would be that the museum would
  • be a frontier and the beginning of a much larger movement,
  • where people would begin to see each other again as people,
  • all of us brothers and sisters.
  • I think that when you liberate sexuality,
  • when you stop censorship, when people begin
  • to feel like people again, what can only naturally follow
  • is less wars, less interest in corporate structures
  • and dehumanization.
  • And when people start making love and feeling
  • love for each other, it's pretty hard to hate
  • and it's pretty hard to kill.
  • And this would be my hope, that this
  • would be one small atom of a large movement that
  • would hopefully, you know obviously,
  • it's going to take time.
  • But it's a start, however small a start, and it's moving.
  • It's burgeoning.
  • There are already galleries now that are beginning to accept
  • erotic work that before didn't.
  • There is a gallery now in New York City called the Erotic Art
  • Gallery that opened about six or seven months after we opened,
  • that was encouraged, obviously, by our work.
  • And if this is beginning to happen,
  • on however a small scale, I think
  • that it'll just begin to pick up speed,
  • and we may get somewhere.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: I think your hopes are very much like mine.
  • And I want to thank you for taking the time--
  • JANICE EPP: Oh, you're welcome, you're welcome.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: --for this interview.
  • JANICE EPP: My pleasure.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: And thank you for creating this museum.
  • JANICE EPP: You're welcome.
  • It's my pleasure.
  • And I hope that some of the people
  • in your part of the country get a chance
  • to come out and visit with us.
  • BRUCE JEWELL: Thank you.
  • JANICE EPP: Um-hm.