In an announcement posted on its website, and re-published in MinnPost, the Walker Art Center declared its intention to screen “A Fire in My Belly,” by the late artist David Wojnarowicz. Originally part of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, the film was pulled by curators after Catholic lay activist Bill Donahue and several conservative lawmakers took offense at a scene where ants crawl over a crucifix, calling the film “anti-christian,” and declaring that their tax dollars ought not go to any activity they found offensive.

The film was part of an exhibition called “Hide/Seek,” and explored the ways art has reflected changing attitudes toward sexual identity. Wojnarowicz made the film to explore his anger and struggle his HIV diagnosis and the death of a man with whom he had a romantic relationship.

“Since its making, this film has become an iconic art work of the 1980s and has had a visible place in AIDS activism in New York and the U.S,” wrote Walker director Olga Viso.

“In every regard, the NPG should be applauded for organizing, mounting, and presenting this groundbreaking, scholarly exhibition and supporting the curators’ well argued thesis that a powerful artistic and cultural legacy has been ‘hidden in plain sight for more than a century,'” Viso wrote. “Yet the NPG’s and Smithsonian’s surprising decision to remove a key work from the exhibition a month after its opening undermines this thesis as well as the premise and curatorial integrity of the exhibition in alarming ways.”

For more discussion of “A Fire In My Belly,” see this column by Frank Rich, from Sunday’s New York Times.