National Portrait Gallery withdraws Wojnarowicz video from Hide/Seek Exhibition
“Catholic League President Bill Donohue said the video by artist David Wojnarowicz depicting ants crawling on a crucifix was “hate speech” and designed to insult Christians,” and so yesterday the National Portrait Gallery simply removed the video from the Hide/Seek: Difference in Desire in American Portraiture exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
The allegedly offensive portion of the video is a mere 11 seconds long, showing a small crucifix covered in ants.
Hide/Seek surveys “how same-sex love has been portrayed in art, from Walt Whitman’s hints to open declarations in the era of AIDS and Robert Mapplethorpe’s bullwhips. Amazingly, this is the first major museum show to tackle the topic.” As Blake Gopnik so aptly notes, the exhibition “handles it with all the subtlety required. Scholars Jonathan Katz and David Ward have mounted one of the best thematic exhibitions in years.”
For the National Portrait Gallery director Marty Sullivan’sstatement — or rather, lackthereof — on the removal of Wajnarowicz’s video, please view this.
How terrible that the removal of the video/censoring of a gay artist who died from AIDS coincides with World AIDS Day.
