Bill Donohue, one-man Catholic crusader, has focused his ire on contemporary art before, to great public effect. (He went after Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” in 1996 and Catholic artist Cris Ofili’s portrait of the Virgin Mary in 1999.)
Now he’s targeted a remarkable document, a video called “A Fire in My Belly” made by David Wojnarowicz when the artist was dying of AIDS in the 80s (see a clip here).
It was on view as part of an exhibition called Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, “the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of American portraiture.”
After removing the video from the exhibition, the gallery director, Martin Sullivan, was quick to assert publicly that the curators had not intended to offend, and offered regret that anyone might think that the video was “intentionally sacrilegious.”
The rapidity of the Smithsonian’s response was alarming to see, especially as Mr. Donohue (as many journalists seem not to have noticed) does not represent many actual Catholics. Here’s hoping the museum re-installs Wojnarowicz’s visionary work.
