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Step outside the southern entrance of the National Portrait Gallery tomorrow, and you’ll encounter another establishment set up for your viewing pleasure: The Museum of Censored Art.
Staffed by D.C.-based artists Michael Blasenstein and Michael Iacovone, who initially protested the Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough’s censorship of the Hide/Seek exhibit with iPads, and volunteers, the “Museum” is actually a trailer. In it, David Wojnarowicz‘s “A Fire in My Belly”—removed from Smithsonian grounds after a windfall of conservative opposition—will be screened.
From the Museum of Censored Art’s website:
We feel that Clough made a wrong and shameful decision to marginalize the work of an already marginalized gay artist from an exhibition whose very theme is marginalization. We are screening “A Fire in My Belly” in the Museum of Censored Art (a trailer we have set up outside the National Portrait Gallery) so visitors to “Hide/Seek” will still be able to see the exhibit in its entirety.
The trailer will occupy two parking spots on the 700 block of F Street NW from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., until Hide/Seek closes on February 13.
This time, Blasenstein and Iacovone are armed with the appropriate permits which should, hopefully, prevent the duo from a repeat of their last Hide/Seek protest, in which they were “ejected and subsequently banned” from the Portrait Gallery.