Entertainment

‘Mother’ of all museums

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Joy Rose walks through a veil of red, orange and magenta ribbons, demon strating how it should be done.

“See, this is the birth canal,” she says, as strips of fabric flit over her head. “These ribbons represent the veins and sinews.”

Then she walks into the main room of the museum, closing a red gate tightly behind her.

“It’s like now we’ve been born,” she says.

Welcome to the Museum of Motherhood — right at the intersection of gimme-a-break and sort-of-genuis.

Rose, 54, is the founder and executive director of the museum, which is located on the Upper East Side, on the lower level of an apartment building at 401 E. 84th St.

The pop-up museum was birthed last week to “educate about the role of mother — not just the Hallmark concept, but the ‘herstory’ of what has come before, and where do we go now,” according to Rose.

“We had a job, we got empowered, we fell in love, we put on an apron, popped out a baby and got amnesia,” says Rose of mothering.

“We forgot about our past, our creativity,” she says.

She hopes the Museum of Motherhood will be a reminder, she says. The museum careens between kitsch and academia, pop culture and social justice. It looks handmade because it is. Rose almost single-handedly hung every item in it. It looks lovingly fawned over because it is. Rose, a self-described “jackass of all trades,” has been planning it since 2002 — she opened it with funding from Gymboree, Realityworks and the YWCA, among others.

These are some of the items one will find in the Museum of Motherhood:

* A display of “virtue boxes” — framed watercolor paintings of words such as “hard work” and “courage” — to remind visitors that mothers invest in human capital instead of their own economic capital when raising children.

* A life-size diorama of a turn-of-the-century parlor representing the suffrage movement in Seneca Falls, NY.

* Realistic baby dolls that cry and can be breastfed — which can be borrowed within the museum — and weighted pregnancy vests.

* A lending library with titles such as “Encyclopedia of Motherhood,” “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” “Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay” and “Blindsided by a Diaper.”

* Panels depicting “Birth Practices Through the Ages” — one describes how women in the Middle Ages were told to prepare their shrouds and confess their sins in case of death.

* A signed copy of Barbra Streisand’s “Live Concert at the Forum” album. (“She’s also a mom,” Rose explains.)

* Black-and-white photos by Alexia Nye Jackson that contrast unpaid mothers’ work with paid labor — a housekeeper makes $23,798 a year, the caption reads, and a nurse’s assistant, $28,925.

“So that’s a conversation,” says Rose. “I don’t know if there’s an answer, but it’s a conversation.”

She settles onto a black leather couch in a corner of the room.

“This is our hangout area. You have your book or a rented baby, and you want to just chillax and sit down. The hope is that you can be here in a power vortex of motherhood,” she says. “You can come here and be lifted and healed.”

At her back is a “grief-itti” wall — a blackboard where women can write their laments in chalk.

“I love my body,” reads one such lament.

“Your mom tried her best. She also failed sometimes,” reads another.

The most interesting item in the museum might be Rose herself — a colorful personality who embodies the complexities of being a mother, artist and woman.

She has peroxide blond hair with fuchsia tips, a nose ring and four grown children. She had a video on MTV in the ’80s called “In and Out of Love Affairs.” She got married, had four kids in five years, battled and beat lupus, opened the flagship Betsey Johnson store in SoHo and moved to Westchester. She raised her kids and formed a new band, Housewives on Prozac, which played Giants Stadium. (Rose wore a dress made of laminated cereal boxes, also on display at the museum.)

She started the “Mom Rock” movement and the “Mamapalooza!” nationwide conference and music festival, got a divorce, won a Susan B. Anthony Award from the New York City branch of the National Organization for Women and now — phew! — has opened the Museum of Motherhood.

Elizabeth Mangum-Sarach, a doula and Lamaze trainer, performed at the museum’s kickoff event, a reading of “Birth: The Play” by Karen Brody, which details the story of five women’s pregnancies.

“There’s a need for an institute that honors mothers,” she says. “It’s a space that allows women — mothers or not — to cherish themselves and know that their role is crucial in our society.”

Since opening Sept. 1, the museum has had about 150 visitors, including attendees at “Birth” — which was on Labor Day, naturally. The museum offers daily cultural programming and workshops, and admission is $15 for adults and $5 for children 5 and older. Younger kids are free.

On a recent afternoon, a frazzled mom rolled her 3-year-old daughter into the museum.

“Are you open?” she asked, looking like she needed a drink and a hug. Rose took the woman, Lynn Shaul, 44, for a tour of the space. Shaul studied the displays while her daughter played on a plastic jungle gym.

“It’s amazing. It’s absolutely amazing,” she says as she gets ready to leave, off to pick up her son from school. “It’s exactly what we need, especially in this neighborhood. It kind of holds up a mirror for us. We often don’t have time to look in the mirror. And I mean that metaphorically and literally.”