New York (CNN) -- A video that features ants crawling over a crucifix has gone on display at a New York gallery -- after it was banned from a Smithsonian museum -- raising questions over the boundaries of freedom of expression in a city known for its art. 
 
 The exhibit, entitled "A Fire in My Belly, A Work in Progress," was produced by David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 after suffering from AIDS. 
 
 It began screening Saturday at the New Museum, which is devoted exclusively to contemporary art, according to the museum website. 
 
 The complete video is over 30 minutes long and includes graphic sexual content -- including masturbation and full frontal nudity -- and has renewed opposition from religious groups offended by the depiction of Jesus covered by insects. 
 
 "I think that in the artistic community, directors, curators are tremendously insensitive to Christians, they respond by claiming victim status and I find it appalling," said Catholic League President Bill Donohue. "You can't make fun of the Holocaust, you can't make fun of black slavery..... and you can't even depict anything about Mohammed." 
 
 The video was recently removed from a Smithsonian exhibit after Donohue led protests against it and petitioned Congress to cut the institution's funding after it presented the video. 
 
 "The New Museum has always defended freedom of expression and continues to oppose censorship," said museum director 
 
 Lisa Phillips in a written statement. "We cannot afford to take hard won civil liberties for granted and need to remain vigilant and protect artistic freedom." 
 
 The move prompted dozens of art galleries to request the rights to show the video, said Wendy Olsoff, co-owner of the P.P.O.W. Gallery, which holds the rights to the video. 
 
 "I think it was a bad decision, poor judgment," she said. "Someone who didn't see it, called it in, put pressure and they pulled it. If you pull one piece how do you know another wouldn't be pulled. That's censorship." 
 
 The video is currently displayed in the museum's lobby and can be viewed free of charge. ||||| A strange and surprising report emerges from Avignon, where Catholic activists protested at the Museum of Contemporary Art and, rather than merely demonstrating against a work they considered blasphemous (as they had done on Saturday), actually destroyed it. Pierre Haski reports at Rue 89: 
 
 Sunday, Palm Sunday in Catholic tradition, the protesters were more aggressive: two people managed to get into the museum and to strike at art works with hammers that they concealed in their clothing. No one was arrested at the time, but, according to the director of the museum, who was interviewed on France Culture [a radio station], two people had already been identified from photos taken at Saturday’s protest and are being sought by the police. 
 
 One of the works they destroyed was Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph “Piss Christ,” which, Haski writes, was “displayed two years ago at the Pompidou Center without making waves.” But, of course, Paris isn’t Avignon—the seat of the papacy in the fourteenth century. The organization behind the protest, Civitas (“for a Catholic city”), expressly seeks “the restoration of the social reign of Jesus Christ over civil society.” 
 
 In 1989, Serrano’s photograph became an object of national controversy here when it was shown in an exhibit in North Carolina. At the time, I was working as an editorial factotum to Edward de Grazia, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, as he was completing his magisterial book about the recent history of censorship (mainly) in the United States, “Girls Lean Back Everywhere.” He discusses the controversy in the book. Serrano and his work were denounced on the floor of Congress by New York’s Senator Alfonse D’Amato and by North Carolina’s Senator Jesse Helms (“I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him because he is not an artist, he is a jerk”). It resulted in funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, which had partially financed the show in which the photo was included—as well as in a bill to prevent the N.E.A. from funding art works that “denigrate the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular religion or nonreligion.” But the photograph wasn’t destroyed. 
 
 I’m reminded of the difference between screenings of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Hail Mary” in France in January, 1985 (advance screenings there were interrupted by protesters who threw stink bombs, and a reel of the film was stolen from a projection booth), and its screening here at the New York Film Festival later that year (protesters arrived by the busload and blocked the streets in front of Alice Tully Hall, but the police cordoned off a corridor to allow ticket-holders to pass, and the screening took place unimpeded). In 1988, movie theatres in France showing Martin Scorsese’s film “The Last Temptation of Christ” were vandalized—including by Molotov cocktail and tear gas—and spectators were assaulted by Catholic fundamentalists.
– A battle over an ant-covered crucifix has moved to New York City. The Smithsonian bowed to pressure by top Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and dumped an art exhibit video showing ants crawling over a crucifix. The "Fire in My Belly" exhibit, by artist David Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS, is now on display at the New Museum. "I think that in the artistic community, directors, curators are tremendously insensitive to Christians," complained Catholic League President Bill Donohue. "You can't make fun of the Holocaust, you can't make fun of black slavery, and you can't even depict anything about Mohammed." The "New Museum has always defended freedom of expression and continues to oppose censorship," responded director Lisa Phillips. "We cannot afford to take hard won civil liberties for granted and need to remain vigilant and protect artistic freedom." Dozens of galleries and museums offered to display the video, which also includes nudity and masturbation, after it was axed by the Smithsonian, reports CNN.