The GOP and the Artist Who Spoiled Yet Another Christmas

[Derechos]

In 1992, the American artist David Wojnarowicz died after a battle with AIDS, at the age of 37. He left behind him a host of challenging, provocative works of art...and a legacy of challenging and provoking the Religious Right. Toward the end of his life, Wojnarowicz's art drew the outrage of the American Family Association, which used images of his work on pro-censorship pamphlets, and who he in turn sued for copyright infringement. Now, 18 years after his death, Wojnarowicz is again a target of the Religious Right's newly empowered censorship efforts.

Wojnarowicz's four-minute video piece, "A Fire in My Belly," which evokes the suffering of AIDS victims using Latin American themes inspired by the artist's time in Mexico, was included in a groundbreaking exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery examining gay and lesbian identity in American art. The Right is, unsurprisingly, unhappy with the existence of the exhibit and found in Wojnarowicz's video a convenient lightning rod: 11seconds depicting ants crawling over a statue of Christ on the cross.

Hours after right-wing groups began to voice their opposition to the 11 second fragment of the video, the director of the Portrait Gallery announced that the piece would be removed. The reason? "Some of the accounts of this got out so virally and so vehemently," said Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan, "that people were leaping to a conclusion that we were intentionally trying to provoke Christians or spoil the Christmas season."

The path from David Wojnarowicz's struggle with AIDS to the director of a Smithsonian museum announcing, ironically on World AIDS Day, that Wojnarowicz's artwork might spoil someone's Christmas, says a lot about American politics at the start of a new era of right-wing power. A Religious Right extremist generated controversy in the far-right base, found an eager echo chamber in the Capitol Hill GOP, and won an astoundingly easy instant victory over a skittish federal agency.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-b-keegan/the-gop-and-the-artist-wh_b_790973.html

Mr. Sullivan's statement on the matter can be read here http://www.npg.si.edu/docs/hide-seek-statment.pdf

Public comments can be directed to National Portrait Gallery at:

PO Box 37012
MRC 973
Washington, D.C. 20013
or
[e-mail]

[AsahinaKimi]

1. What it means to be a Republican

[thereismore]

2. GOP is the Antichrist that ruined Christmas. nt

[Derechos]

3. Update: Gallery vows 24-hour protest against Smithsonian

WASHINGTON — A Washington art gallery is pledging a 24-hour protest against what it calls censorship by the Smithsonian Institution for removing a video from an exhibit after complaints from the Catholic League and members of Congress.

Transformer Gallery manager Barbara Escobar says it will show the video piece, "A Fire in My Belly" by David Wojnarowicz, in its storefront window every day until it's reinstated at the National Portrait Gallery.

The gallery also is organizing a silent protest march Thursday evening to the Smithsonian.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20101202/us-art-sexual-orientation-protest/