Paid to ponder and gather erotic art

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!) - Laura Henkel spends her days looking and thinking about erotic art and gets paid up to $300 an hour for her efforts.

The 40-year old Sausalito resident, who lives on a houseboat, appraises erotic art, including hard-core pornography, sex comic books, film posters and suggestive paintings.

She is also putting together a collection for a new explicit museum to open in Las Vegas next year.

"It's very entertaining. I feel very lucky that I do what I do," Henkel said in an interview,

"It's definitely not boring."

Henkel worked for 18 years as a legal secretary in Miami and San Francisco before changing careers and getting a doctorate in human sexuality at San Francisco's Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

She is now leading an effort by the Exodus Trust, the institute's parent organization, to set up the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas by next January.

"I'm always just fascinated," she said about coming across a new collection. "I look at it as a whole, almost like a kid in a candy store, what's that, what's the value of this, what's the story behind this?"