AA Bronson, shown on Aug. 12, 2006, is urging the National Gallery of Canada to demand return of his photo Felix, June 5, 1994, from a Washington exhibit. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

The National Gallery of Canada is seeking legal advice over a dispute between Toronto artist AA Bronson and the Washington-based National Portrait Gallery.

Bronson, a former member of Toronto's pioneering General Idea art collective, has asked the National Portrait Gallery to return his photograph from the gay-themed exhibit Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.

His request is a protest against the gallery for removing a four-minute excerpt of the 13-minute video A Fire in My Belly by late artist David Wojnarowicz because of objections by conservative U.S. groups.

Bronson's photo, Felix, June 5, 1994, is owned by the Ottawa-based National Gallery of Canada and on loan to the National Portrait Gallery.

The artist sent an email to Marc Mayer, director of the NGC, saying his "moral rights under Canadian and American copyright law" were being violated because the Washington gallery is refusing to return the photo, which shows the body of Bronson's partner shortly after he died of AIDS.

"I am instructing the National Gallery of Canada to remove my work Felix, June 5, 1994 from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., immediately, and until such time as the David Wojnarowicz video is restored in full," Bronson writes.

The artist's lawyer has contacted the NGC about the issue, Mayer indicates in a return email.

"Now that we have been contacted by your lawyer on this complicated legal matter, you will understand that as representatives of the public interest, the responsible thing for us to do is to seek our own legal advise [sic]," he writes.

Last week Mayer urged the NPG to comply with Bronson's request, but had not made a formal application on behalf of the Ottawa gallery. Bronson has accused Mayer of stonewalling.

Bronson has referred to the removal of Wojnarowicz's video as "hurtful and disrespectful."

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture is intended to be an exploration of sexual difference in contemporary portraiture.

The Smithsonian-run NPG said it removed a segment of Wojnarowicz's video because it was "distracting from the overall exhibition."

The video, an examination of AIDS, has an 11-second sequence in which ants crawl over a bloodied cross. Objectors said it was "anti-Christian."