Defending Artistic Freedom at a Time of Growing Censorship

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Defending Artistic Freedom at a Time of Growing Censorship – Tools, Strategies, and Real-World Cases

🗓️ Tuesday, October 14, 2025

  • 🕖 8.00 AM New York, USA (EDT)
  • 🕖 9.00 AM Buenos Aires, Argentina (ART)
  • 🕖 2.00 PM Warsaw, Poland (CEST)
  • 🕖 8.00 PM Singapore, Singapore (SGT)

Abstract:

We have, over the past year, been seeing growing censorship across the world, mainly in the form of political pressure from state apparatuses. This pressure is being exerted via direct orders, the media or cut-backs in public funding for culture. All too often, such pressure sparks hate campaigns in social media. Museums, art institutions and artists frequently find themselves at a loss. Tactics and interventions from international organizations like CIMAM or AICA may not bring the desired results, standing as token gestures.

In this climate, self-censorship is on the rise, striking at the very heart of contemporary art, a heart criticality based on freedom of expression. How can museum leaders or cultural workers navigate these conditions? Where can they turn for protection? What tools are available to them and what is their geographical reach?

The session co-organized by CIMAM and AICA International, with the generous participation of Freemuse and the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), seeks to map and better understand censorship today, while sharing practical resources and solutions for this critical challenge.

Guest Panelists:

  • Malgorzata Kaźmierczak, President of AICA International, Krakow, Poland.
  • Sanjay Sethi, Co-Executive Director of the Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), New York, USA.
  • Sara Whyatt, Freemuse’s Research Director, UNESCO expert, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Moderated by Malgorzata Kaźmierczak. Hosted and co-moderated by CIMAM Board Members Victoria Noorthoorn, Director of Museo Moderno in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Malgorzata Ludwisiak, Independent Curator and Museum Management Expert, Warsaw, Poland.

Rapid Response Webinars are free of cost for CIMAM members.

Sessions are recorded and posted in CIMAM's Members Only section for those who missed the time.

Biographies:

Małgorzata Kaźmierczak (Moderator, President of AICA International), historian, curator, researcher, and author specializing in performance art and contemporary art criticism. Since 2004, she has curated numerous projects in Poland and the USA and published widely on the intersections of art, society, and politics. As President of AICA International, she actively defends freedom of artistic expression, leading protest actions and solidarity campaigns. She has reported on censorship cases in Poland, collaborated with Freemuse, and participated in Council of Europe workshops on artistic freedom led by Sara Whyatt. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at KEN University of Kraków, combining academic research with global advocacy for artists’ rights.

Sanjay Sethi is a human rights lawyer and Co-Executive Director of Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), where he leads programs in New York and Geneva dedicated to defending freedom of creative expression and supporting artists at risk worldwide. Under his leadership, AFI has grown into a leading international organization providing pro bono legal aid, relocation support, and cultural programming for threatened artists worldwide. He spearheaded the Afghan Artists Protection Project, which has assisted in the relocation of hundreds of Afghan artists and their families since 2021. His career spans law, culture, and policy at both national and international levels. As founder of Sethi & Mazaheri, Mr. Sethi has litigated hundreds of asylum and removal cases in the U.S. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a Supervising Attorney at Berkeley Law, where he teaches and mentors students on international human rights and artistic freedom. Sethi's work is driven by the conviction that safeguarding artistic freedom is inseparable from safeguarding democracy itself.

Sara Whyatt is Freemuse’s Research Director with a long history of research and advocacy on freedom of artistic expression. She headed PEN International ‘s freedom of expression program for over 20 years before becoming a freelance consultant in 2013 since when she has contributed her expertise to numerous organisations working in the field of artistic freedom. She is a member of the EU/UNESCO Expert Facility 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and is also an Expert working on the Council of Europe Directorate for Democracy’s Free to Create-Create to be Free initiative.

Recommended readings:

"Silenced, Not Stopped: AICA's Toolkit for Resisting Censorship" by Eric Otto Wear.

"Cultural Control: Censorship and Suppression of the Arts in Poland" and "Systemic Suppression: Hungary’s Arts & Culture in Crisis" by Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI).

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CIMAM 2025 Rapid Response Webinars are made possible with the support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Professionals/Sharing Expertise initiative.