The statement of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU) regarding the visit of the Minister of Culture to the Slovak National Gallery (SNG)

Minister Martina Šimkovičová recently visited the Slovak National Gallery, specifically the long-term exhibition of contemporary art. Among the artworks, she filmed a video and, in her characteristic way, called on people via social media to comment on the exhibited pieces. The footage showed works by Emília Rigová, Peter Kalmus, Jozef Jankovič, Jana Želibská, Anna Daučíková, and other internationally respected artists. Considering that the ministry's favored candidate for the position of SNG director, Juraj Králik, plans to reduce artworks in the gallery's collections, Šimkovičová's social media post serves as a clear signal of which works might be affected. The video reveals that Šimkovičová has no understanding of her surroundings and, with her post, invites people on social media to attack the artworks, their creators, and even the curators of the exhibition. She indirectly imposes her views on viewers, as she knows well she cannot express them directly on camera, making her actions all the more insidious. As stated in the video, visitors can view the exhibition "with their own eyes until the end of March," a deadline Šimkovičová herself decided upon, terminating the long-term exhibition.

In 1937, Nazi Germany organized an exhibition of degenerate art, Entartete Kunst, in Munich. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels visited the exhibition and publicly condemned works by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and an entire generation of outstanding German interwar expressionists. Goebbels and Hitler hated modern art and didn’t even try to understand it; their aim was to destroy its creators and burn their works. Unfortunately, they often succeeded. Great German art was intended to emerge based on nationalist criteria they formulated, celebrating Nazism and Aryan ideals.

The policies of Šimkovičová and Machala bear similarities to those of Nazi Germany. Their deep ignorance of art history and the historical, social, and political contexts of individual artworks turns the gallery's displayed works and their creators into targets of hatred and disdain within society. Machala goes further, describing the artworks as a "panopticon of psychiatric diagnoses" in his Telegram post. Similarly, Nazi officials in Germany disparaged the works of avant-garde interwar artists.