Please join Columbia’s Harriman Institute and the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI) on November 10 at 6pm for a panel discussion on right-wing governmental interference into the arts and cultural sector in Hungary and Poland. The event will center around two reports recently released by AFI, Systematic Suppression: Hungary’s Arts and Culture in Crisisand Culture Control: Censorship and Suppression of the Arts in Poland,both offering an in-depth analysis of how illiberal approaches to governance have impacted the Hungary and Poland’s artists, cultural workers and arts institutions.
The Hungary panel will focus on the rise of FIDESZ, the placement of the Hungarian Academy of Art (MMA) as a conservative oversight body for arts and culture, the consolidation of media, and the systematic stacking of the country’s major arts and culture institutions with party loyalists. The featured presenters will include:
- Barnabas Bencisck: former head of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest
- Szabolcs Kisspal: Hungarian visual artist and academic
- Emese Pasztor: assistant professor in the Faculty of Law of ELTE University and legal counsel at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union
The Poland panel will discuss PiS’s use blasphemy and defamation laws to intimidate artists, the Ministry of Culture’s overhaul of the management of arts and cultural institutions, the denigration of artists in the media, and the emboldening of private actors to harass and threaten artists. This session will feature:
- Filip Pawlak: former head of production at the Nowy Theater in Warsaw
- Agnieszka Jakimiak: director, playwright, drama writer, reviewer and essayist
- Malgorzata Kazmierczak: historian, curator, art critic and Vice-president of AICA International
We invite anyone with an interest in arts and culture, human rights, or legal and policy advocacy to join us!
