Photo by by Evan Walsh/Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody
Audio By Carbonatix
There are collectors and curators of erotic art, and then there are collectors and curators of erotic art with a seven-foot pink dildo torpedo by the artist Alesha Fiandaca in their bedroom, a living room dedicated to gay art stylist and pioneer Tom of Finland, and a revolving screen of Playboy pinups in their bathroom.
Beth Rudin DeWoody is firmly — not to mention solely — in the latter camp.
“I’ve always been drawn to the erotic in art because it can be playful and deviant,” says DeWoody, who acquired the first drawing of her wild and sprawling eponymous collection in 1969 at the tender age of seventeen. “We all like to feel a bit naughty. If we’re not creating the work, we take pleasure in viewing it — even if we don’t always admit it.”
It’s a temptation that will be all the easier to indulge when Allapattah’s Museum of Sex hosts “Hard Art: Unruly Selections from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection” beginning Friday, October 17. The exhibition, on view through May 2026, encompasses a “wide range of media spanning from the 1930s to the present, including sculptures, paintings, collages, photography, and interactive installations” to “reframe sexuality in both playful and confrontational ways, with a focus on artists and content historically censored.”
For the museum — which opened to the public last fall as a satellite of the New York City Museum of Sex, itself open since 2002 — early exhibitions have focused on the future (Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama’s solo show “Desire Machines,” which explores “intimacy, exhibitionism, and desire in the age of AI”) and the historical (“Modern Health: 100 Years of Design and Decency,” exploring “how the classification of health and the medicalization of intimacy…have transformed over time”). The DeWoody exhibition will mark its first time working with one of America’s most important contemporary art collections.
“I was aware that she has one of the largest contemporary art collections in the world that included a lot of playful, erotic, daring art about sex with much pride — which is why we wanted to work with her,” museum managing director Tam Gryn, who previously oversaw cultural programming at the Moore, tells New Times. “Hard Art,” however, exceeded even these great expectations: “It’s bold, hilarious, important, beautiful…She’s ahead of her time and unpredictable. I admire the way she has been devoted to collecting work from erotic perspectives no one else has.”
Maynard Monrow, a curator for the DeWoody collection and an impressive modern artist in his own right, smiles as Gryn says this, then adds: “When others shy away, Beth zeroes in. She’s just so supportive of challenging work. Some of it is beyond adventurous, even.”
Monrow describes DeWoody as “the reluctant influencer.” She’s always present in what he calls “the playground of pleasure, the erotic arena.” She’s always collecting; always supporting emerging galleries and artists. DeWoody, for example, acquired pieces by Glenn Ligon, Joan Semmel, and Judith Bernstein early. But she’s never sought the spotlight or undue credit for herself. For her, it remains about championing work few others champion.
“Beth is a very intuitive collector,” says Laura Dvorkin, Monrow’s co-curator both for this show and at the DeWoody collection-centered Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach. “She often will acquire a work within a few minutes just based on looking at it, responding to it, and really not caring what anyone else is saying at that moment.”
DeWoody has become something of a Keeper of the Erotic Flame through ever-changing social mores, perspectives, cultural evolutions, and political persecutions. After all, though the mode — or, in the current parlance, algorithm — may change, censorship never goes away — not really. And, so, having a collector who was active when, say, Betty Tompkins was being censored in the 1970s and Robert Mapplethorpe was being canceled in the 1980s, but who also is active when there’s not one, but two, Museums of Sex and the oppressional threat matrix has shifted, offers invaluable institutional knowledge.
“A lot of the works in the exhibition do have a political context,” Dvorkin says. “The artists are exploring the erotic, but often through that they’re also exploring larger societal themes — censorship; freedom of sexuality across the spectrum; social isolation. And the breadth of Beth’s collecting, and the fact that she does go in for underrepresented and challenging work, allows you to see the cultural arc. There are not many collectors who could put together a contemporary exhibition of art like this with all these important undertones.”
“It’s so relevant yet also approachable to the general public in a way many contemporary art collections just are not,” Gryn adds. “That’s important to us as a museum…I just think there’s so much to be said for Beth’s eye — it’s almost unprecedented.”
It’s true. DeWoody is far out ahead of both the contemporary market and popular culture in such an undeniable way. But not in the sense that she’s pushing anyone away. There is authority on display in “Hard Art,” yes. There is boldness, sure. But there is also humor and a generosity of spirit and what Dworkin appropriately dubs “a playful, connective quality” and a lot of wink-wink, nudge-nudges. It’s extraordinarily refreshing and wonderful and rare to see a gallery show pull all of that together.
“The Museum of Sex is daring, unbridled, and just plain fun, which is exactly why I love it,” DeWoody says. “I couldn’t be happier about this collaboration and the chance to share a part of my collection that rarely gets seen.”
Oh, and what about that seven-foot pink dildo torpedo? Is it in the show?
You bet your naughtiness-loving backside it is.
“Hard Art: Unruly Selections from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.” Opening Friday, October 17, at the Museum of Sex, 2200 NW 24th Ave., Miami; 786-206-9210; museumofsex.com. Admission costs $24 to $30.
