A Fire in My Belly (2010)

In 2010, filmmaker Bart Everly produced and edited the 4.15 minute version of the unfinished work "A Fire in My Belly" by David Wojnarowicz for the exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" held at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (26 October 2010 - 13 February 2011), under the direction of exhibition Curator, Jonathan David Katz, and with permission of the Wojnarowicz Estate. This 4.15 minute version of "A Fire in My Belly", true to Wojnarowicz' original imagery (though not order of sequence), personal notes, and papers, became the subject of public controversy, and was removed from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit on 30 November 2010, a decision about which a panel of experts appointed by the Smithsonian Board of Regents later expressed regret: "In the absence of actual error, changes to exhibitions should not be made once an exhibition opens without meaningful consultation with the Curator, Director, Secretary and the leadership of the Board of Regents." (Hugh Ryan, "About Face: How Eleven Seconds of Film Endangered the Smithsonian", Critical Read, 17 May 2016.)