Philadelphia Museum photography exhibit ‘Unsettled’

It is nearly half a year since the Smithsonian Institution bowed to congressional pressure and ordered the removal of an exhibited artwork deemed offensive by a religious group. But the “Fire in My Belly” controversy continues to spur reflections on the tensions between government, religious conservatism and freedom of expression in the arts.

Prompted by that controversy, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has mounted a photography exhibition that looks back to the so-called culture wars of the late 1970s through the 1990s, when social conservatives fought to prevent tax money from supporting art that dealt with homosexuality, feminism, racism or other contentious issues.

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“Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art” is not a comprehensive overview of the culture wars. Only three of the nine artists were central to the debates in that earlier period, and none of their most inflammatory works is included. But the exhibition is a timely response to the Smithsonian flap and a chance for younger viewers to learn about previous clashes between religious conservatives and advocates of freedom of expression in the arts.

In the Smithsonian case, the banned work, a grainy amateurish film by the late David Wojnaro­wicz, was part of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” the first U.S. museum survey of modern portrayals of homosexual identity.

Portions of the film included brief scenes of ants crawling on a plastic crucifix that the Catholic League declared “hate speech disguised as art,” as though Christ has not endured far worse in the annals of art history. The film is no love letter to the Catholic Church — an institution that condemns homosexuality and ignored the AIDS crisis that inspired the work — but neither is its allegorical imagery inappropriate for an art exhibition.

That did not stop Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the incoming majority leader of the House at the time, from calling the show “an obvious attempt to offend Christians.” John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the incoming speaker, warned that unless corrective action was taken, Congress would penalize the Smithsonian financially.

It seemed a good moment for the head of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, to reject legislative meddling in aesthetic affairs and cite the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. But Congress holds the purse strings for roughly 70 percent of the Smithsonian’s billion-dollar budget, and with the government considering drastic cuts to reduce the deficit, Clough told the museum director to pull the film.

The art world cried censorship, and museums and galleries across the country immediately screened versions of the forbidden work in protest. The Philadelphia show is a kind of prequel to that scandal.

The culture wars revisited

It is remarkable how closely the government interference with the National Portrait Gallery parallels the events of 1989. That year the Corcoran Gallery of Art, fearing congressional reprisals, canceled a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective that included sexually explicit photographs. And Andres Serrano’s photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in yellow fluid — he dubbed it “Immersion (Piss Christ)” — drew vehement fire from the Christian right.