As the temporary collection they created notched its 5,000th visitor, Mike Blasenstein and Michael Dax Iacovone — the pair who were “banned” from the Smithsonian museums last December after protesting the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” from the National Portrait Gallery — are now allowed to return to the the Institution’s museums.

Photo by KentonNgo.News came out late this week that the Museum of Modern Art in New York has acquired the video, David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly,” that the Smithsonian removed from an exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery in December. The MoMA, a private institution, has certainly never scared away from exhibiting controversial art. While this is certainly a powerful statement to the merit of the video, as Kriston Capps points out,…

Anyone who missed David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” before it was removed from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit Hide/Seek on November 30 will soon be able to see it right outside the museum. Mike Blasenstein and Michael Dax Iacovone, who were detained on December 6 for playing the video on an iPad in the NPG lobby, have followed through on their promise to host a temporary gallery for censored work.

Photo by yospyn. It’s been a few weeks since the National Portrait Gallery chose to take down David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” after conservative writers and Congressional Republicans complained. A few protests followed, various galleries are now showing the piece, the Andy Warhol Foundation threatened to withdraw its funding to the Smithsonian. Now the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation is threatening to do the same, if the Portrait Gallery does not reinstate the piece…

Protests over the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery began to pick up steam last week, when about 100 people marched from Transformer Gallery, who had displayed the work in its front window, to the Gallery. Now, some are taking the protest into the halls of the Portrait Gallery.

The recently maligned National Portrait Gallery was the setting Thursday night for a protest over its controversial removal of a video piece, A Fire in My Belly by artist David Wojnarowicz, from its GLBT-focused exhibits. TBD reports that a crowd of about 100 people showed up, walking from the Transformer Gallery, which started displaying the 4-minute segment in question the day before, near Logan Circle to the front steps of the National Portrait Gallery on…