The Metropolitan Museum’s collection includes three works by David Wojnarowicz.
The museum has two 8mm films: A Fire in My Belly (Film in Progress) and the posthumously produced A Fire in My Belly (Excerpt), 1986–87. The collection also includes David’s sculpture Untitled, 1984 (skull, papier-maché, barbed wire, battery, watch, and rusty nails), of which Met curators write: “In this skull, pierced with rusted nails and wrapped in barbed wire, forcing it to forever hold a ball of money, one can read a critique of the capitalist interests and corrupt government politics that presided over the administration of then-President Reagan. Wojnarowicz’s lover, the famed photographer Peter Hujar, captured the artist holding a skull from this series in a Civilian Warfare ad.”
The Met’s collection also includes David’s 1983 painting William Morales, Patron of Prison Breaks (acrylic on masonite), first exhibited at the Met in its exhibition The 1980s: A New Generation, American Painters and Sculptors, 1988.
Photographer Peter Hujar’s 1981 portrait David Wojnarowicz With a Snake is also in the Metropolitan’s collection.
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