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New York Rally to Stop Censorship at the Smithsonian: Sunday December 19, 1:00 PM, steps of the Metropolitan Museum

New Yorkers who want to protest the censorship of David Wojnarowicz’s video at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. get their chance on December 19. Organizers have called a march, gathering at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and concluding at the Cooper-Hewitt on 91st Street (like the National Portrait Gallery, the C-H is a Smithsonian Institution).

Protest Sunday, December 19 at 1:00 PM in New York City and take collective action for free expression.

GATHER on the Metropolitan Museum steps Fifth Ave. & 82nd Street

Then MARCH to the Cooper-Hewitt/Smithsonian FIFTH Ave. & 91st Street

Stop the Censorship!

Put the Wojnarowicz video back!

Send a message to the Smithsonian Institution and all of its museums: Stop the Censorship.

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Late in November the Smithsonian’s head, G. Wayne Clough, did something unconscionable and shocking – he ordered the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC to ‘remove’ a video by David Wojnarowicz from a museum show called Hide/Seek. Demand that the video be reinstalled now.

A month into the show’s run Clough capitulated to the complaints of right-wing politicians and an anti-gay religious group, and yanked the four-minute piece titled “A Fire in My Belly.”

A New York Times editorial assailed the Smithsonian’s “appalling act of political cowardice.”

Is this any way to run a museum?

The Hide/Seek show is an important, groundbreaking exhibit about sexual identity and we urge you to see what’s still on display.

When he died in 1992, Wojnarowicz, an artist and writer with AIDS, left a body of work about the disease that remains unrivaled for its power and beauty.

Demand the video be reinstalled now so the public can see the exhibition as the curators intended.

Stand up for free expression, for art that challenges and even pushes our buttons.

Protest Sunday, December 19 at 1 PM in New York City and take collective action for free expression.

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Other NYC EVENTS:

The New York Public Library - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - 7:00 PM, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium : Conversation with Jonathan D. Katz and David C. Ward, curators of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, moderated by Jason Baumann, who coordinates LGBT collections for the New York Public Library

International Center for Photography - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - 7:00 PM, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street New York, NY 10036, RSVP required: ecardona@icp.org -free: Screening and discussion with: Nayland Blake, Joy Episalla, Jonathan D. Katz, Kristen Lubben, Amy Scholder, Marvin Taylor

P·P·O·W Gallery (511 W 25th St, room 301) is screening the original full length version of "A Fire in My Belly" at the gallery until December 22nd.