On 25 August, the Slovak National Gallery (SNG) took down a large installation by Denisa Lehocká. Museum personnel told the Slovak artist they needed the wall space for another exhibition.
Lehocká says the unexpected removal of the “extremely fragile” work is “a gross violation”. She says the 15-metre-long installation was intended to be permanent and the contract stated it could only be moved with the artist’s permission. She states that the SNG merely notified her of its plans without seeking her approval, and that, at her request, the police were in attendance to officially record the removal.
“This breach of trust and contract underscores a broader crisis in the current cultural landscape,” says Inés Lombardi of Vienna’s Lombardi-Kargl gallery, which represents Lehocká.
The Ministry of Unculture (as we now call it) has been destroying the sector
It is indeed just the latest in a long line of controversies at Slovakia’s flagship art museum, which has found itself at the centre of a wider conflict between the art community and the country’s populist government. Government intervention in the arts prompted numerous organisations and individuals to issue a joint call to the EU in May “to adopt a European Artistic Freedom Act as a concrete legislative tool to protect creative expression and democratic values”.
Robert Fico, in his fourth term as Slovakia’s prime minister, has taken a combative approach to governance, introducing major changes across civil society, the media and the criminal justice system, including abolishing the special prosecutor’s office, which was responsible for investigating high profile corruption cases, and replacing the public broadcaster with a new body.
Opponents of the government have staged repeated mass protests on the streets of Bratislava, while international organisations, including the EU, have expressed serious concerns about the rule of law and a slide in democratic standards.
This upheaval is mirrored in the arts scene, where the government’s high profile culture minister, Martina Šimkovičová, has been accused of “purging” the sector by firing the directors of numerous museums and state institutions. While Fico’s background is in left-wing politics—he originally joined Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party in 1986—Šimkovičová is a member of the right-wing Slovak National Party, which claims to follow a “European-Christian value system”.
Intimidation and threats
A former TV news presenter, Šimkovičová is a polarising figure who has pitted herself against what she describes as “progressive art”. Sparking international criticism, Šimkovičová in August last year removed the SNG’s director, Alexandra Kusá, who had been in post since 2010. Since her dismissal, four successive directors have taken on the role.
In November 2024, 177 SNG employees threatened to resign en masse, citing an atmosphere “of intimidation, threats and investigations” under one of Kusá’s successors, Jaroslav Niňaj. While his appointment proved to be short lived, around 100 employees resigned at the start of this year. (Neither the ministry of culture nor the current leadership of the SNG responded to requests for comment.)
Denisa Lehocká’s Untitled (2023), which was removed from the Slovak National Gallery
Photo: Jiří Thýn; courtesy the artist and Lombardi-Kargl
Former SNG employees and their supporters have been staging their own art installations and events in spaces near the institution’s main building in central Bratislava, under the banner Slobodná národná galéria (Free National Gallery).
Much of the Slovak art scene’s opposition to the government’s interventions has been led by the group Otvorená Kultúra! (Open Culture!), which formed in early 2024. In May, the group organised an international conference in the Slovak capital leading to the release of the Bratislava Declaration for Artistic Freedom, calling for EU legislation.
Among the organisations involved is the NGO Artistic Freedom Initiative (AFI), based in New York, with an independent affiliate in Geneva (ILA-AFI). In April this year, AFI together with ILA-AFI published the report “Early Warning: The Politicization of Slovak Arts and Culture”, which stated that under Šimkovičová’s leadership, the culture ministry had “shifted from being a supporter of cultural and artistic diversity to an instrument of ideological enforcement”.
Irene Pavesi, one of the authors and a senior officer of human rights research and policy at ILA-AFI, says the organisation is now working with other signatories to the declaration to present a draft artistic freedom act to the European Parliament.
“We are witnessing major shifts in how culture is governed across a range of countries, and Slovakia is just the latest in a series of former communist states—such as Hungary and Poland—that have slid into some form of illiberalism,” Pavesi says.
Adding that “democratic backsliding” has also taken place in South America and the US, Pavesi notes that, while countries such as Brazil and Poland have shown “such trends can be reversed through democratic elections … the damage done to the cultural sector—interrupted operations, curtailed artistic production, stifled research and innovation, and even generational gaps in leadership—can be long-lasting”.
A ‘middle finger’ to cultural sector
Zora Jaurová, a member of parliament and founding member of Slovakia’s largest opposition party, Progressive Slovakia, argues that, in appointing Šimkovičová, Fico showed a “middle finger” to the cultural sector.
“The Ministry of Unculture (as we now call it) has been destroying the cultural sector to an extent that has no comparison in modern Slovak history,” Jaurová says.
“By severe interventions in legislation and the removal of numerous heads of cultural institutions and their replacement by incompetent political nominees, they eroded the institutional base of cultural infrastructure to the point where it is no longer able to work properly,” she says.
The turmoil at the SNG has already had wide implications for the museum. Its largest private sponsor, Tatra banka, ended its partnership in January: a spokesperson for the Slovak bank previously had said the situation at the SNG was “too tense and unclear” for the bank to approve further support. Tatra banka has also ended its 17-year partnership with the Slovak National Theatre, whose director Šimkovičová removed a day before she dismissed Kusá.
Also in January, the German and Austrian organisers of the touring exhibition Red Gold. The Miracle of Herrengrund cancelled its showing at the SNG, which would have been from March to the end of July.
Marius Winzeler, the director of the Green Vault and Armory at the Dresden State Art Collections, told The Art Newspaper that, following the mass resignations, “it became clear that our partners at the Slovak National Gallery would no longer be there during the run of our exhibition and would not be able to supervise the project.”
Winzeler says discussions are now taking place to take the exhibition to the city of Banská Bystrica in central Slovakia next year.
To Jaurová, the “saddest” thing about the country’s current situation is that the “government is systematically destroying culture they don’t like and understand, but they are not able to substitute it with anything else—better or worse. The result is just pure devastation, destruction, ruin and chaos.”
