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Southpaw

Censored expedition reveals societal issues

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Caitlin Hurwit

Columnist

February 18, 2011

Last Sunday, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. closed one of the most controversial exhibits in its 40-year history.

The Institution, sponsor of Hide/Seek, which addressed sexuality and sexual identity in American art, drew the ire of art critics and LGBTIQ activists when it made the decision to remove David Wojnarowicz's video installation, "A Fire in My Belly," due to a seconds-long segment of the film depicting ants crawling over a crucifix.

Ostensibly, the museum caved to pressure from Bill Donohue, the president of the right-wing Catholic League of America, and a handful of Conservative members of Congress—including John Boehner and Eric Cantor—who suggested that the content of the film was offensive and anti-Christian (note that the Catholic League has no official connections with the Catholic Church).

Setting aside the notion that none of these men are art historians and that the imagery and symbolism in the work were read literally and without an ounce of creativity, what positive role can censorship possibly play in a discussion about the historic oppression and expression of identity?

One of the show's curators, David C. Ward, defended the use of the imagery in the face of a statement from the Smithsonian that explained the decision to pull the artwork from the exhibition, which stated that some viewers found the crucifix scene to be anti-Christian while acknowledging that the work was a "complex metaphor" for the struggles of those with HIV/AIDS.

News flash: many fundamentalists believe homosexuality itself to be anti-Christian, which is part of the reason why the show and its theme "Addressing (and Redressing) the Silence" were necessary in the first place.

Wojnarowicz died in 1992 at the age of 37 due to complications from AIDS.

He created "Fire" to visually examine the death of a lover and the effects of living with HIV/AIDS as a gay man in the 1980s.

The ants and the crucifix are interspersed with images of beggars in Mexico, talismans and tarot cards.

It is a mature and challenging piece, to be sure, and certainly a tragic one: the ants are meant to represent the physical disintegration of someone living with AIDS, particularly before the advent of modern antiretroviral drugs.

It seems obvious at this point to suggest that the pressure from the Catholic League and its cohorts in Congress had little to do with reclaiming the cross as a uniquely Christian symbol and everything to do with personal offense at the underlying subject matter.

One need only look at art history from the past, say 1200 years or so, to see that the cross and Christ's suffering have been universal symbols for artists ranging from unnamed medieval craftsmen to Rogier van der Weyden to Alice Neel to Jean-Michel Basquiat.

To further complicate matters, the Smithsonian is a largely federally funded and administered institution—though this particular show was funded privately, perhaps in anticipation of such misplaced outrage.

In other words, at least two members of the United States Congress, acting as agents of the government and not as concerned citizens, are responsible for the censorship of a key part of an artistic dialogue on identity and expression.

Eric Cantor wanted to close the entire exhibit, and even went so far as to threaten the Smithsonian's funding.

In an interview with the Washington Post on December 6, 2010, another co-curator, Jonathan Katz, had these strong words for the censors of the exhibition: "In 1989 Senator Jesse Helms demonized Robert Mapplethorpe's sexuality, and by extension, his art, and with little effort pulled a cowering art world to its knees [by canceling one of his shows at the Corcoran Gallery, also in Washington, D.C.]. His weapon was threatening to disrupt the already pitiful federal support for the arts. And once again, that same weapon is being brandished, and once again we cower."

Over 20 years later, one would have thought we had reached the end of a period in which it was somehow regrettably acceptable to censor personal expression of identity, literally or figuratively.

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