Toronto artist AA Bronson, shown in August 2006, has sent another request demanding his work be removed from a Washington, D.C., exhibit. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., has said it will not meet Canadian artist AA Bronson's request to remove his work from its exhibition.

Toronto-based Bronson had requested the gallery remove his photograph from the gay-themed exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture after the museum removed a video by artist David Wojnarowicz.

The NPG, part of the Smithsonian, announced in November it was removing a four-minute excerpt of the 13-minute video A Fire in My Belly by Wjonarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992.

The Catholic League, along with conservative forces in the U.S., protested the work as "anti-Christian" because of an 11-second segment featuring ants crawling over a bloody crucifix.

Bronson had said it was "hurtful and disrespectful" to try to edit queer history and asked that his own work be removed as a protest. The photograph Felix, June 5, 1994, is of the body of Bronson's partner shortly after he died of AIDS.

On Monday, the National Portrait Gallery said it will not remove the photograph, Bronson confirmed to CBC News.

Bronson's work is on loan to Hide/Seek from the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which urged the Smithsonian to respect his request to remove the work.

Bronson said his position has not changed and he will continue to demand the return of the photograph.

"My lawyer says that under copyright law, my moral rights allow me to withdraw the work from the exhibition, and he is writing a letter to that effect to both Marc Mayer at the National Gallery of Canada and Martin Sullivan at the National Portrait Gallery," Bronson said in an email to CBC News.

Bronson is the last surviving founding member of Toronto's conceptual art collective General Idea. Formed in 1969, and active until 1994, the trio — which included Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal — created acclaimed installations and performances, many addressing the AIDS crisis.

Retrospective in works

Bronson's tangle with the National Portrait Gallery comes as a major retrospective of General Idea is being put together in Paris.

French curators Frédéric Bonnet and Odile Burluraux are planning the retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, beginning Feb. 11.

The exhibit draws heavily from the Art Gallery of Ontario, the biggest collector of General Idea's work.

AGO curator of contemporary David Moos says this period of Canadian contemporary art history is coming into focus because of attention from France and from another museum in Germany.

"As curator based in Toronto at the AGO, it is absolutely fascinating to me but also inspiring to that foreign curators, non-Canadian galleries take a very deep interest in the work of three great Toronto artists," he said.

Moos said General Idea comprises "great post-modern artists" known for their deconstruction of pop culture, and their subversive and ironic commentary on society. In addition to their work around AIDS, their Miss General Idea Pageant explores ideas such as the muse in the creative process and the relations between audience and media.

"One aspect of their work is that they define a certain end of the art object and the beginning of the art experience," he said, "Where the object ends, the experience of art begins and that is a very subtle, sophisticated and elusive proposition, but they masterfully explore it and elaborate on it."

The AGO is in talks with the French museum to bring the General Idea show to Toronto, he said.