Controversy Over Censored Smithsonian Exhibition Continues, Leaked Letter Hints Smithsonian Regrets Removing David Wojnarowicz Video So Soon, Study Suggests Newly Diagnosed HIV Gay Men Modify Their Sexual Behaviour, Armie Hammer Cast As Clyde Tolson, Chris Pine And Tom Hardy Get Wet

The controversy over the removal by the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian officials of an exhibition by the late David Wojnarowicz continues, the Washington Post reporting that staff are concerned that the censure sets an unwarranted and unwelcome precedent. The staff at the National Museum of American History met Monday with the undersecretary for art, history, and culture, Richard Kurin, and a member of the senior staff who decided that the excerpt from the Wojnarowicz video was a “distraction” to the overall groundbreaking exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. According to reports, two Republicans, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, as well as the Catholic League objected to a brief episode in a video titled Fire in My Belly by Wojnarowicz that shows ants crawling atop a crucifix. The censorship is a calculated response since the Smithsonian’s operating budget is largely controlled by Congress. Since the removal, commissioner James T Bartlett resigned from the advisory panel in protest, in an e-mail writing that "I believe it is a fundamental right of museums and their curatorial staffs to make such decisions [about exhibition content], even if some art is deemed objectionable by external critics. I choose firmly and resolutely not to be part of an institution that is and can be put ad infinitum in this position."

Meanwhile, ARTINFO has obtained a letter authored by National Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan, and the contents of the letter suggest that the internal dissent at the Smithsonian is dividing the institution, ARTINFO writing that “The unpublished document, obtained exclusively by ARTINFO, offers a more conciliatory response to the public outcry over the censorship than does the official Smithsonian statement, which was released on the institution's Web site last night in the form of a Q&A. While Sullivan's memo falls short of an apology, it appears to side with critics of the removal, which was ordered by Smithsonian secretary G. Wayne Clough, as Modern Art Notes blogger Tyler Green first reported.” Dated December 4th, the letter in part reads “I regret that the video was removed from the installation without more deliberate consideration of other possible options” adding that “’A Fire in My Belly’ was misinterpreted as having a meaning that the artist did not intend.’”

A new study published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes concludes that diagnosis with HIV leads to changes in the sexual and drug-use behaviours of gay men, AIDSmap.com reports. The study shows that there was “a reduction in the number of reported sex partners, and in the first few months after diagnosis, there was a reduction in unprotected sex with HIV-negative partners of unknown HIV status.”

E! Online reports that the 24 year old Armie Hammer has been cast as Clyde Tolson in the upcoming Clint Eastwood-directed, Dustin Lance Black-written J. Edgar, the film, still in pre-production, to star Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover.

Chris Pine and Tom Hardy spotted on the Vancouver set of This Means War Wednesday.