Walker Art Center stokes "Fire in my Belly"

Posted at 8:50 AM on December 15, 2010 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Museums, Video

Walker Art Center Director Olga Viso traveled to D.C. earlier this week to tour the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The exhibition is the ongoing source of controversy, after public reaction to the video "Fire in my Belly" prompted the Smithsonian to pull the video from the exhibition.

Viso, a former Smithsonian curator and museum director (of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), says the Walker will screen various versions of the film "Fire in my Belly" daily at the Walker Art Center later this week (see update below), pending arrangements with the artist's estate. In a statement on the Walker's website, Viso says:

Hide/Seek was organized by the NPG to "show how art has reflected changing attitudes toward sexual identity"... In every regard, the [National Portrait Gallery] should be applauded for organizing, mounting, and presenting this groundbreaking, scholarly exhibition and supporting the curators' well argued thesis that a powerful artistic and cultural legacy has been "hidden in plain sight for more than a century." Yet the NPG's and Smithsonian's surprising decision to remove a key work from the exhibition a month after its opening undermines this thesis as well as the premise and curatorial integrity of the exhibition in alarming ways. Indeed this action serves to sublimate or "hide" the very thing the exhibition attempts to make visible.

Last week the American Association of Museum Directors Association of Art Museum Directors, under the leadership of Minneapolis Institute of Arts' Kaywin Feldman, also condemned the actions of the Smithsonian.

The video in question, it should be noted, is easily found on YouTube:

Update: The Walker will screening the film beginning tomorrow through December 30 from 11:30-noon in the Lecture Room; and on Thursday evenings at 8:30 pm. It will be screening the original 11-minute film and the artist's excerpted 7-minute version, as well as the 4-minute version that was shown as part of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition.

Politics and positioning in Smithsonian debate

Posted at 4:30 PM on December 15, 2010 by Marianne Combs (8 Comments)
Filed under: Criticism, Museums

How is it that two Twin Cities museum directors are players in a story that takes place in Washington, D.C.? And what will be the consequences of their actions?

Earlier today I reported that Walker Art Center's Olga Viso has decided to screen the video "Fire in my Belly" at the Walker starting tomorrow. This after the same video was pulled from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Last week the MIA's Kaywin Feldman, who is also head of the Association of Art Museum Directors, released a statement on behalf of close to 200 museum directors criticizing the actions of the Smithsonian.

A deeper look at the controversy, and their reactions, reveals more than just protest.

Kaywin Feldman, as head of the AAMD, had an obligation to speak to this incident, in part because it sets a scary precedent: namely, museum administrators caving to the opinions of politicians. In her statement she pointed to the particularly disturbing fact that those protesting the work of art had, for the most part, not even seen it.

Olga Viso, on the other hand, is joining in with several other museums across the country to show the video by artist David Wojnarowicz (now deceased). As the head of a contemporary art museum, Viso must regularly support work that is controversial. The former director of a Smithsonian museum (the Hirshorn), Viso felt an obligation to see the show and comment on the incident on her blog (she has turned down requests for an interview).

But showing the video is by no means a controversial act. "Fire in my Belly" has been around for almost 25 years and can be found in numerous places on the web. That fact makes the Smithsonian's action seem all the more questionable... and it makes the Walker screenings seem more like a bid for foot traffic than a genuine act of solidarity.

At this time what is needed is not another screening but a forum for an intelligent conversation, in which those who are offended by the work and those who are passionate in its defense can come to mutual understanding.