AMEA // Word Museum of Erotic Art was founded in 1996 and unlike most sites featuring Erotic Art, it was not so much about contemporary pornography. Instead, founder Hans van der Kamp focused on historic art, depicting the act of love.
Why a World Museum?
Well, this was the beginning of consumer Internet and there was a lot of talk about the World Wide Web. The idea you could have visitors from all over the planet, looking at your content, was still a very new concept. Also, the founder wasn’t really sure, he was actually going to succeed, building a website that would draw a large amount of visitors.
The first few weeks, the World Museum consisted of just one page, with very alternative HTML coding, mostly copied from a variety of amateur homepages. There was an image, a disclaimer and four golden keys that led nowhere.
Today, one would call it a landing page. Soon people starting demanding access to this large museum.
So the founder started scanning books with ancient Erotic Art, and compiled them to different exhibits. Setting up a membership system to match up with the golden keys on the front page, was way too complicated for the founder of AMEA, so the site soon became free for the world to enjoy!
Wait a minute…
It is really not that long ago that we killed AMEA. Look at this clip. Apparently, 25 years was enough.
A free museum?
It definitely was in the first years, but then it became harder to pay for the data traffic, so sister sites were created, such as vintage.ameanet.com. forum.ameanet.com and ameamovies.com. It was a lot of work. I was sitting behind my desk at night helping people with login problems: ‘Please sir, there are no problems with your credentials. Let’s try this one more time! Close one eye when you type in your password.’. Of course, most of them were drunk, and so was I.
