Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher recently returned from Romania where he participated in “Cartoon Diplomacy” – an exhibit on editorial cartoons and their impact in politics. His tour included the exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary arts, a media outreach and lectures at schools and universities.
Kallaugher’s satirical drawings for The Economist and US daily The Baltimore Sun are featured in an exhibition that opened this week at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in the Romanian capital.
Ironically, the museum is located in the pharaonic palace built by former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a man who would not have tolerated any satirical cartoons.
“There are many countries in the world today, emerging democracies like Romania, that are grappling with this notion of how much freedom to allow and how much to endure this special kind of criticism that satire cartoons could bring,” said the cartoonist known as KAL who became in 1978 the first resident cartoonist of The Economist.
Here’s video segment of KAL discussing his art and his career.