This week the Warhol Foundation proved unsuccessful in its attempt to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to return David Wojnarowicz's censored video to view at the National Portrait Gallery by threatening to cut off its funding for the museum group. Now New York-based artist AA Bronson has demanded that the Smithsonian remove one of his works from the "Hide/Seek" exhibition as well, in solidarity with the late Wojnarowicz. That request, too, has been rebuffed by the Washington, D.C., institution.

As Smithsonian spokesperson Bethany Benley told Modern Art Notes blogger Tyler Green, Bronson's request to take down his work "Felix, June 5, 1994," will not be honored because "the Smithsonian and the Portrait Gallery are committed to keeping all of the works currently in the exhibition on view through February 13." The work was loaned for the show from the National Gallery of Canada, and the Smithsonian will "adhere to the loan agreement," said Bentley, who described it as a "legally binding document."

The Smithsonian's Kafka-esque twisting of paperwork against the cause of decency is particularly obscene considering the context of Bronson's request. Wojnarowicz's 1987 video "Fire in My Belly" was removed from the exhibition after the Catholic League and Republican lawmakers condemned it for an 11-second clip showing ants crawling over a crucified Christ — a poignant, if mordant, testament to the experience of gay AIDS sufferers like Wojnarowicz himself, who died of the disease in 1992. Bronson, as a co-founder in 1969 of the media-based art collective General Idea, saw both of his artistic collaborators fall to AIDS, including his lover, Felix Partz, to whom the Smithsonian artwork is dedicated.It is a large-scale color photograph of his body taken shortly after his death.

"My piece in the show, the Felix portrait, is built around the same subject matter as the Wojnarowicz," Bronson told MAN in an interview. "I realized that just from a position of solidarity with an artist who's not here to defend himself I had no choice" but to try to withdraw the work from the exhibition.

The censorship controversy at the Smithsonian has become as riveting a flash point as it has because Wojnarowicz, whose video was unfairly maligned for the transparently homophobic purposes of the Christian right, is such a tremendous and complex talent whose work has until now been too little known. While the National Portrait Gallery commissioner has resigned in protest over the video's removal, the curatorial forces behind the show have by and large proven the least compelling protagonists in the drama.

Appearing at the New York Public Library yesterday, co-curator David C. Ward told audiences that he was disappointed they could not muster even "a fighting retreat" in the face of the blind, knee-jerk campaign against the video's Christ imagery, while the other curator, Jonathan Katz, noted that the art institutions "now clucking their tongues at the Smithsonian" had declined to show the exhibition themselves — as if it was the merits of the show that had galvanized the art community, rather than an opposition to censorship.

Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan, meanwhile, seemed resigned, sighing, "Was it a great decision? Absolutely not," but saying that the whole controversy will become "just an anecdote" to future culture wars under a budget-cut-happy Republican congress. These, ladies and gentleman, are America's cultural stewards in the nation's capital.