Kate Taylor, New York Times: "Museums Jump In to Show Video Removed by Smithsonian", December 17, 2010
Copyright New York Times.
Excerpt:
While artists, foundations and activists continue to protest the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to pull an AIDS-themed video from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery after it was criticized by the head of the Catholic League and some Republican members of Congress, dozens of museums, including the Tate Modern, are lining up to show the disputed video, by the artist David Wojnarowicz.
ILLUUSTRATION. Calder Foundation The Calder Foundation is withdrawing “Aztec Josephine Baker,” which it had agreed to lend to the National Portrait Gallery, in protest of a decision to pull an AIDS-themed video from an exhibition. (Click Image to Enlarge)
And earlier this week the artist AA Bronson wrote to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, a Smithsonian museum, to ask that the gallery remove one of his works from the exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portaiture,” which explores homosexual themes, The Washington Post reported. The Bronson work in question, a wall-sized photograph titled “Felix, June 5, 1994,” shows the corpse of Mr. Bronson’s partner shortly after he died of AIDS. It is on loan to the exhibition from the National Gallery of Canada. A spokeswoman for the National Portrait Gallery said that the gallery wanted to keep the exhibition intact and therefore would not return the photograph early, according to the blog Modern Art Notes.
Meanwhile, Michael Katakis, a photographer and writer based in California, has written to the head of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, asking that it return his photographic portrait of Maya Lin, which he donated to the National Portrait Gallery two decades ago.
On the foundation front, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, which gave a grant of $10,000 for “Hide/Seek,” has joined the Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts in declaring that it will provide no further financing to the Smithsonian unless the Wojnarowicz video is reinstated. Mapplethorpe’s work is, of course, famously associated with censorship: In 1989, shortly after Mapplethorpe died of AIDS, a retrospective of his photographs was canceled by the Corcoran Gallery in Washington because of concerns that the homoerotic and sadomasochistic imagery would incite conservative politicians against the National Endowment for the Arts, which had provided financing. When the exhibition was then shown at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, the center and its director were charged with obscenity. They were ultimately acquitted.
The Calder Foundation, meanwhile, is withdrawing an artwork it had agreed to lend to the National Portrait Gallery for an upcoming show of Calder’s portraits, in protest of the Smithsonian’s decision to remove the Wojnarowicz video. The foundation’s president, Alexander S.C. Rower, notified Mr. Clough of the decision by letter on Friday. The Calder work, a nude wire portrait of Josephine Baker titled “Aztec Josephine Baker,” is currently on long-term loan to the National Gallery and will remain there, the foundation said.
In his letter to Mr. Clough, Mr. Rower wrote: “As it is clear that the Smithsonian wishes to appease a fringe audience, it seems appropriate that we remove from the exhibition Aztec Josephine Baker which is surely a most provocative work depicting a nude, African-American woman.”
. . .
In response, more than five dozen museums and galleries are now showing, or planning to show “A Fire in My Belly.” Tate Modern will host an event dedicated to Mr. Wojnarowicz’s work, which will include a screening of an edited clip of the video, on Jan. 22.
Meanwhile, a group of activists in New York is planning to take to the streets. An organization called Art Positive, which formed in response to the removal of the Wojnarowicz work, will hold a protest march on Sunday afternoon, beginning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and ending at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a Smithsonian outpost.
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