The Mad Scientist of Sydney and Her Shrine to Animal Genitalia

How one enterprising artist turned a fascination with flea penises into the world’s foremost collection of creepy crawly private parts.

Illustrations by Andy Warner

The building on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, Australia, has an unassuming exterior. They built ships here once, long ago. It is dark inside and your eyes take a moment to adjust.

When they do, you are greeted by rows of softly illuminated cases made of glass and aluminum and filled with small, exquisite sculptures of insect genitalia. The sculptures twist and turn in intricate and impossible shapes. Pure white against the black surrounding them. They are beautiful and unsettling—Greek sculptures of Lovecraftian monsters. A video of two stick insects mating is projected at the end of the exhibit.

This is the Museum of Copulatory Organs.