Impossible for the French to be serious about sex?

“The lighting is bordello red, but the librarians insist that their X-rated exhibition is serious” writes The New York Times on the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s exhibition of their archive of erotic art.

Oh, please.

What exactly about the exhibit makes it so hard to believe these French librarians are scholars and not perverts? The fact that the exhibition’s subject is sex? The atmospheric lighting (which I find charming and funny)? Or is this just another instance of Puritan America crossing its arms and frowning at what it perceives as Europe’s flippancy towards sex?