Wojnarovicz Glitch: Touring "Hide/Seek" Perpetuates Curatorial Concoction

"Hide/Seek" substitution: David Hockney, "Adhesiveness," 1960, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

It's great that the National Portrait Gallery's landmark, gay-themed Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (which closed Feb. 13) will travel---something that I've been urging since Dec. 8.

It's particularly commendable that the two venues on the tour---the Brooklyn Museum (Nov. 18 to Feb. 12, 2012) and the Tacoma Art Museum (Mar. 17-June 10, 2012) will restore David Wojnarovicz's hot-button video, "A Fire in My Belly," to its rightful place in the show, from which it was controversially removed (under political pressure) on Nov. 30, a month into its Washington, DC, run. 

There's one big problem, though: The version they'll be showing in Brooklyn and Tacoma is not Wojnarovicz's.

Given the chance for a do-over, the organizers are unaccountably perpetuating the NPG's misstep by allowing the four-minute pastiche of Wojnarovicz's piece---edited and reconceived by the show's guest co-curator, Jonathan Katz---to stand in for the late artist's actual work. The real reel exists in two longer versions and (unlike Katz's remake) has no soundtrack. It's bad enough that the curators violated the artist's moral rights once. There's no excuse for doing it twice.

This is the excuse that was recently offered to me via Sally Williams, the Brooklyn Museum's public information officer:

Our agreement with the National Portrait Gallery [is] to show as much of the original checklist as possible. And as it was first presented, we plan to show the edited four-minute version of David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in My Belly."

Bad plan.

When we were co-panelists at the symposium on Hide/Seek: Museums, Ethics and the Press last April at Rutgers University (co-sponsored by Seton Hall University's Institute of Museum Ethics), the NPG's director, Martin Sullivan, declared:

I think Lee [that's me] is correct as to the integrity of "Fire in my Belly." Jonathan [Katz] was trying to reconcile two things that didn't fit nicely together: One was the piece itself. The second was the behavioral dynamics of what happens in the busy space where people are moving back and forth. The option that we had was a kiosk...and it didn't work. And I won't do it again [emphasis added]...because the integrity of the artist's product was compromised.

Despite this, they ARE doing it again...and Martin shouldn't stand for it.

There will be some changes to the show, necessitated by the reluctance of the some lenders to again part with pieces for the tour. I've learned about two of these. (There may be more, as planning continues.):

---F. Holland Day's "Nude Youth with Laurel Wreath and Lyre," from the "Orpheus" series, to be loaned by the Library of Congress, will substitute for Day's "The Vision" from the same series.

---David Hockney's "Adhesiveness," 1960 (image at top), to be loaned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, will substitute for Hockney's "We Two Boys Together Clinging," 1961,

AA Bronson's crucial "Felix, June 5, 1994," owned by the National Gallery of Canada, which the artist had wanted withdrawn from NPG's show to protest the removal of the Wojnarovicz video, will be on view in the Brooklyn and Tacoma iterations. The Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe foundations, which had said they would discontinue support for all Smithsonian exhibitions unless the video were reinstated, are on board with additional financial support for the tour.

Speaking of financial support, my warm thanks go out to CultureGrrl Repeat Donors 167 and 168 from Paris, France and NYC, who have stepped up to my Send CultureGrrl to Orlando Challenge (scroll to the fourth panel in the 12-1 p.m. slot---"Digging Culture," also starring Felch, Frammolino and Grimaldi).

It's crunch time, art-lings: I'm leaving late next week and I've only got enough contributions for three-quarters of my two-night hotel stay. I'm getting close, but I'm not there yet (unless you take a moment to click my "Donate" button)!