Ralph Whittington Collection March 16, 2009

Ralph Whittington, recently retired as a curator at the Library of Congress after 38 years of service, has been a major force in acquiring and documenting pornography since the 1970s. Since picking up a pocket-size magazine on a second-grade school trip to Baltimore, he has known of his interest in the subject and "came out" as a collector about twenty years ago. His collection, which includes more than four hundred 8-millimeter films, 700 videos, 1,500 magazines, 100 books and artifacts such as blow-up dolls and bawdy house coins, has been recently acquired by the Museum of Sex.