Katz on Smithsonian’s censorship of Hide/Seek

A man with amputated legs walks in the midst of traffic with his hat in his hand, asking for money. A loaf of bread, divided in half, is stitched back together with red thread. A man sews his own lips shut; ants crawl over a bloody crucifix placed in the gravel amidst silver coins. A street performer breathes fire from a plastic jug; the globe burns, as does the eye which might watch it. These are images from an edited version of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly, a film at the center of the most recent battle in the culture war between social conservatives and the art establishment.

The film was initially on display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery as part of an exhibition entitled Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, co-curated by Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, and featuring 105 pieces and 4 videos. Divided into historical periods, Hide/Seek charts the representation of homosexuality in American visual art from the country’s origins through the Stonewall Riots and the AIDS epidemic and into the present.

Censorship backfires

On November 29, conservative website CNS News reported negatively on the exhibition. By the time the story was picked up by John Boehner (R-Ohio), Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, conservatives’ attention had narrowed from the exhibit as a whole to the segment from A Fire in My Belly in which ants crawl over a crucifix. Accusations of sacrilege were levied against the film, and on November 30, the Smithsonian opted to remove Wojnarowicz’s film from the exhibition, though curator Katz was not consulted prior to its removal. Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough said he ordered the video pulled because it was distracting from the rest of the exhibition. Critics of the removal countered that it was an act of censorship and subject to inappropriate pressure from Congress, who must approve funds for the Smithsonian.

Ironically, its removal only increased the notoriety of the film — A Fire in My Belly spread across YouTube, and protestors who displayed the film on their iPads within the portrait gallery were removed by security and banned from the Smithsonian. The website HideSeek.Org organized to track protest actions and screenings.

Last week, Dr. Katz  visited the Milwaukee Art Museum to talk about his exhibit and the ensuing controversy.

Katz’s curatorship of Hide/Seek strove to orient the viewer to issues of sexual identity at the time of an artwork’s creation.  For example, if a piece was created in periods of systemic oppression and censorship, it requires the viewer to decipher hidden messages. Thomas Eakins’ Salutat (1898), for example, may not explicitly address sexuality, but it invites the viewer to admire the almost naked figure of a young boxer outside of the ring. By contrast, Frank Woods’ Arnold Comes of Age (1930) encodes homosexuality into the nude bathing scene and the butterfly on the figure’s sleeve. Not only does the butterfly symbolize the beautiful hiding in plain sight, but the French word for ‘butterfly’ is also slang for a gay man.

Message misunderstood

During the panel discussion following Katz’s presentation, another panelist, Rev. Steven Peay, an Episcopal priest and associate professor of church history, suggested that the formation of the Catholic League was a response to anti-Catholic sentiment in America. The reverend maintained that when the League saw Wojnarowicz’s film out of context, it was bound to find what it was looking for: hate speech.

Dr. Katz, on the other hand, believes that the conservative response to Hide/Seek was an attempt to manufacture outrage, orchestrated ahead of time. The issue of religion was selected as a weak point, according to Katz, because Republicans knew it was no longer acceptable to be openly homophobic. Katz did not provide any evidence to substantiate this belief, but a report by Kriston Capps alleges that members of The Media Research Center — Penny Starr, who wrote the story at CNS, and Brent Bozell, a member of the Catholic League — planned the scandal.

Even if the claim of hate speech is taken as sincere, problems arise. Just because Catholics were a persecuted minority in the 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony does not mean the same is true today. Nor do American Catholics share the same attitudes toward mortality as the Mexican Catholics from whom Wojnarowicz drew his inspiration.

Considering the public’s role in art

During the discussion, Kali N. Murray, Assistant Professor of Law at Marquette University, seemed optimistic that if the problem were examined at the level of institutions, solutions would be clearer. When institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery define their mission in relation to the public, they can minimize their risk in advance by consulting with interested constituents prior to a decision to displaying transgressive art. However, Murray cautions that there are difficulties with this as well: how does one decide which members of the public have an interest in the display of art, and at what point does the consultation process stop?

The matter is further complicated by the ambiguous relationship between art and the rest of the public sphere. Unlike other speech acts, art, if it is communicative at all, communicates indirectly. This is especially true in the case of lesbian and gay art, which has not always been able to express itself directly. The artist is simultaneously apart from and a part of the community in which he or she is embedded: the creator’s intention behind the artwork anticipates the interpretation of the viewer to complete the circuit, yet he or she also attempts to defy and to alter the viewer’s conventional interpretation of the world. For art, perpetual transgression is the norm. Wojnarowicz passed away in 1992, so he is no longer available to explain his intention. The 4-minute Smithsonian version of A Fire in My Belly differs from the 13- and 7- minute versions Wojnarowicz worked on in his lifetime.

Developing with William Rudolph, curator of American Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the question of the curator’s role in challenges between art and public approval, Katz clearly came out in favor of the challenging role of art. He asserted that if museums vetted art by consultation prior to an exhibition, “bland pabulum” would result. A informed curator must educate and encourage the public. When this happens, the potential offensiveness of the artwork becomes a provocation to further debate, rather than a reason to retreat into what is already comfortable.