Still of David Wojnarowicz’s video “A Fire in My Belly”

Last night, the Washington Jewish Community Center (DCJCC) hosted a packed house of over two hundred people for the highly-anticipated panel discussion “hide/SPEAK: An Evening with David C. Ward of the National Portrait Gallery.” The panel also included Transformer director Victoria Reis, ARTINFO blogger Tyler Green and DCJCC Bronfman Gallery director Dafna Steinberg.

But everyone was there to hear Ward, the National Portrait Gallery historian and co-curator of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, explain his stance on the Smithsonian’s controversial decision to pull the Wojnarowicz video and their subsequent rejection of AA Bronson’s request, made in protest, that his work be pulled from the show and returned to the National Gallery of Canada.