This panel discussion explores how various forms of censorship—whether social, political, or administrative—reshape the landscape of artistic expression. Our panelists will discuss the consequences of these pressures, including loss of funding, institutional strain, and long-term challenges to organizational mission and integrity. Through this conversation, we aim to uncover how censorship affects both individual artists and the broader cultural sector, and to consider strategies for sustaining openness, transparency, artistic freedom, and community trust.

Panelists:

Paz G is self-taught Chilean artist whose ceramic sculptures and paintings explore memory, displacement, sound, resistance music, power, love, and spiritual consequence. Paz’s work has been featured at YBCA, Manetti Shrem Museum, di Rosa, SJICA, Kasmin Gallery, and more, and they were a finalist for the 2024 SFMOMA SECA Award.

Becky Alexander is a librarian and archivist with the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive where she works to preserve the 150-year history of the now-closed San Francisco Art Institute. She is a contributor to the current SFMOMA exhibition People Make this Place: SFAI Stories, and her writing about SFAI can be found in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's online exhibition Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories/Matrix 277, Acid Free Magazine, and Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo (UC Press). She is currently working on a project about academic art librarians who have gone through institutional closure.

Max Blue has contributed art criticism and reporting to Artsy, BOMB and Hyperallergic, among others, and he is the art critic for the San Francisco Examiner.