Despite its significance, the exhibition recently has been under fire by a small, vocal group of politicians and the Catholic League, who have denounced it, criticizing the film A Fire in My Belly (1987) by David Wojnarowicz. Wojnarowicz made A Fire in My Belly shortly after his companion and muse, the artist Peter Hujar, died from complications related to AIDS. Aggressive, macabre, and distressing, the film contains metaphoric footage meant to express loss and anger about the fact that the AIDS epidemic devastated the gay community while mainstream society largely ignored the problem.

The original A Fire in My Belly contains 13 minutes of footage, with an additional seven minute chapter. Both versions are without sound and composed of short shots of 8mm film captured by the artist in Mexico. For Hide/Seek, exhibition curator Jonathan Katz worked with editor Bart Everly to shorten each segment of the film so that it would total four minutes in length. Katz also chose a recording of an ACT UP rally found on an audio cassette in Wojnarowicz’s archives to serve as a soundtrack to the film. The video editor has posted this version of A Fire in My Belly on Facebook.

Opponents of the exhibition have targeted three brief segments of A Fire in My Belly, which depict ants crawling on a crucifix. Ants, which were seen by Wojnarowicz as having a social structure parallel to humans, were used to reference the artist’s perception of society’s indifference at the suffering of others.
Due to political pressures, mainly from House of Representatives members John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Eric Cantor (R-VA.), Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough removed the video from Hide/Seek on November 30, 2010.

Censorship of artists is an ongoing issue, major instances of which resurface every decade or so. While not limited to these instances, the key players in this current act of censorship have been linked to similar debates in the past.

This isn’t the first time the Catholic League, and specifically its president William Donohue, has promoted censorship of contemporary art. In 1999, the group protested the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s exhibition Sensation and urged for the withdrawal of public funding for the museum. Then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened to withdraw funding, but the Brooklyn Museum of Art resisted, and continued the exhibition with all of the originally planned artworks on the basis of the First Amendment right of free speech. The litigation of the Brooklyn Museum of Art by the city of New York lasted six months, but was eventually dropped, and the museum continued to receive public funding.

In 1989, Wojnarowicz was subject to criticisms for an essay he authored for the catalogue of the AIDS exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, in which he criticized politicians for their lack of action in response to the AIDS epidemic. The National Endowment for the Arts, under the leadership of John Frohnmayer, demanded that the organizing gallery return the NEA’s funding of the exhibition due to Wojnarowicz’s charged essay. After an intense public outcry, Frohmayer withdrew his demands, and the catalogue continued to be funded by the NEA. Hear Wojnarowicz discuss the controversy.

Additionally, Wojnarowicz’s exhibition Tongues of Flame was subject to criticism by the American Family Association in 1990. Organized by Illinois State University Art Galleries, this exhibition explored the subjects of AIDS and homosexuality. The Association cropped images of Wojnarowicz’s, rendering much of the content out of context, and distributed these altered images in a mailing list to every member of Congress and 3200 church leaders. Wojnarowicz reacted by filing and wining legal actions against the group, which had to correct the initial mailing with follow up letters. Similar to A Fire in My Belly, Wojnarowicz’s work was misrepresented by those opposed to it by the singling out of specific imagery within a larger work of art.

Obviously, these are just a few of many examples of attempted censorship related to politics, funding, and religious ideologies.

Wojnarowicz’s passed away from AIDS related causes in 1992. In his spirit of activism, the New York-based gallery P.P.O.W. is organizing a nationwide protest in response to the removal of his work. P.P.O.W. encourages everyone to print a copy of Wojnaorwicz Untitled (One Day This Kid…) (1990), a self-portrait by Wojnarowicz that describes the homophobic struggles he faced throughout his life, and post it in a public place. The poster of Untitled (One Day This Kid…) is currently on display by the IMA’s front desk as a gesture of the belief that museums are places for the exchange of ideas, the promotion of dialogue, and the representation of all aspects of our culture, free from censorship.

To find out more about the posting of Untitled (One Day This Kid…) in public spaces, visit P.P.O.W.

Ask IMA CEO Maxwell Anderson about the price of freedom. He’ll tell you about the IMA’s successful challenge to a law passed by the Indiana legislature this year forcing any entity selling materials deemed “harmful to minors” to register with the State and pay a fee to do so. If Judge Sarah Evans Barker had not agreed with the IMA, Big Hat Books, and other plaintiffs and struck down the restrictive law, every school with a sex ed text book—or art museum gift shop with books featuring the nude form—would have had to pay up and be policed.

Ask Indianapolis educator Connie Heermann about the price of freedom. Connie is the Perry Township teacher suspended without pay for teaching the book The Freedom Writers Diary in her class last year without permission from the school board. The book, written by the students of California teacher Erin Gruwell, is a record of their daily lives, fraught with violence and racism. This work of non-fiction contains profanity and bloodshed–because that’s what these teens experienced.

Filmmaker Richard LaGravenese (Living Out Loud, Freedom Writers) turned the story of Erin Gruwell and herstudents into a film starring Hilary Swank. In a Huffington Post blog entry last month, LaGravenese makes a passionate defense of the liberty to learn.

In the spirit of the First Amendment, the IMA is hosts a screening of the film Freedom Writers and a post-film discussion with Connie Heermann. Come to the IMA August 21 at 6 pm to hear about an all-too-real struggle for free expression in Indiana. Dissenters welcome.