The National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution look like cowards. A week ago, after a few hours of pressure from the right-wing Catholic League and various conservatives, it removed a video by David Wojnarowicz, a gay artist who died from AIDS-related illness in 1992. As part of the outstanding “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” exhibition that brought together 100 works from the late 19th century to the present, examining how gender and sexual identity have altered the development of the genre.
Hide/Seek” exhibition, the gallery was showing a four-minute excerpt from a 1987 piece titled “A Fire in My Belly” made in honor of Peter Hujar, an artist-colleague and lover of Wojnarowicz who had died of AIDS complications in 1987. And for 11 seconds of that meandering, stream-of-consciousness work (the full version is 30 minutes long) a crucifix appears onscreen with ants crawling on it. It was an inconsequential part of the total video, but apparently the combination of a gay artist and the artistic allegory was too much for the thought police.
>>>apparently the combination of a gay artist and the artistic allegory was too much for the thought police.
No, it was too much insult to the people paying the bill.
And I wonder how SMC would react to a video from the Westboro Baptist Church showing a picture of Matthew Shepard on the fence, crawling with ants. Shown, of course, at the Smithsonian Institute. Why, SCM is so open minded, he wouldn’t mind at all.