Artist asks to withdraw work from ‘Hide/Seek’
exhibit to protest video removal
Blake Gopnik, Washington Post, Thursday, December 16, 2010
In protest of the removal of a controversial video, Canadian artist AA Bronson, one of the pioneers of gaythemed contemporary art, early Thursday asked for a major work of his to be withdrawn from the Smithsonian exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” which explores imagery by and about homosexuals.The exhibition, at the National Portrait Gallery through Feb. 13, has been the source of controversy since Nov. 30, when Christian activists and members of Congress pressured the museum into removing one of its pieces, a 1987 video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz that included 11 seconds of footage of a Crucifix crawling with ants.
The piece that Bronson has asked to be removed is a mural-size color photograph titled Felix, June 5, 1994, showing the corpse of the artist’s partner Felix Partz, lying in bed only minutes or hours after his death caused by AIDS. The photo is one of the exhibition’s linchpin works, and praised as a “harrowing, almost unbearable image” in my rave review of “Hide/Seek”.
Bronson’s request for withdrawal, just after midnight Thursday morning, took the form of an email to Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, in which the artist writes that he has asked the National Gallery of Canada, the work’s owner, to take back the photo. “I had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time soon. As an artist who saw firsthand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian lightly.” If the Canadian museum chooses not to withdraw the work, it is not yet clear whether Bronson has the authority, either legal or moral, to force them to do so.
In the email, which the artist forwarded to the Washington Post, he says:
Dear Martin Sullivan
I have sent an email to the National Gallery of Canada requesting that they remove my
work Felix, June 5, 1994 from the “Hide/Seek” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I
had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the
censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time
soon. As an artist who saw firsthand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my
generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian
lightly. To edit queer history in this way is hurtful and disrespectful.
yours truly,
AA Bronson
Artistic Director
Institute of Art, Religion, and Social Justice
at Union Theological Seminary
Artist asks to withdraw work from ‘Hide/Seek’
exhibit to protest video removal
Blake Gopnik, Washington Post, Thursday, December 16, 2010
In protest of the removal of a controversial video, Canadian artist AA Bronson, one of the pioneers of gaythemed contemporary art, early Thursday asked for a major work of his to be withdrawn from the Smithsonian exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” which explores imagery by and about homosexuals.The exhibition, at the National Portrait Gallery through Feb. 13, has been the source of controversy since Nov. 30, when Christian activists and members of Congress pressured the museum into removing one of its pieces, a 1987 video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz that included 11 seconds of footage of a Crucifix crawling with ants.
The piece that Bronson has asked to be removed is a mural-size color photograph titled Felix, June 5, 1994, showing the corpse of the artist’s partner Felix Partz, lying in bed only minutes or hours after his death caused by AIDS. The photo is one of the exhibition’s linchpin works, and praised as a “harrowing, almost unbearable image” in my rave review of “Hide/Seek”.
Bronson’s request for withdrawal, just after midnight Thursday morning, took the form of an email to Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, in which the artist writes that he has asked the National Gallery of Canada, the work’s owner, to take back the photo. “I had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time soon. As an artist who saw firsthand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian lightly.” If the Canadian museum chooses not to withdraw the work, it is not yet clear whether Bronson has the authority, either legal or moral, to force them to do so.
In the email, which the artist forwarded to the Washington Post, he says:
Dear Martin Sullivan
I have sent an email to the National Gallery of Canada requesting that they remove my
work Felix, June 5, 1994 from the “Hide/Seek” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I
had resisted taking this step, hoping that some reconciliation could be reached regarding the
censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video, but it is clear that this is not coming any time
soon. As an artist who saw firsthand the tremendous agony and pain that so many of my
generation lived through, and died with, I cannot take the decision of the Smithsonian
lightly. To edit queer history in this way is hurtful and disrespectful.
yours truly,
AA Bronson
Artistic Director
Institute of Art, Religion, and Social Justice
at Union Theological Seminary