Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Cartoonists Under Siege,” on the rich history and uncertain future of political cartooning, with Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher, award-winning editorial cartoonist for The Economist, former artist in residence at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and frequent speaker at universities.

[Doors open at 3. The talk starts at 4:30. The room is open seating.]

It’s a tumultuous time to be political cartoonist, with those who hold such a job title struggling to weather the failure of newspapers as well as pressure and threats stemming from the overall degradation of public discourse. Yet, meanwhile, the appetite for satire is exploding.

How did we get to this point? What does the future hold for the artists whose irreverent takes on the issues of the day have long stirred and informed political debate?

Hear such questions tackled by Kevin Kallaugher, an international award-winning political cartoonist widely known by the pen name KAL, who previously worked for The Baltimore Sun, continues to maintain a repository of his work at Kaltoons.com, and routinely speaks at prestigious higher-education institutions such as Harvard and Columbia.

In a copiously illustrated lecture he’ll take you through the history of the cartoon craft, showing how irreverent illustrations in 18th century England and France paved the way for the caustic caricatures of today. He’ll introduce you to influential caricaturists like Paris’s Honore Daumier and New York’s Al Hirschfeld and offer insights into the social skills required to excel in his ancient art.

Kallaugher will walk his audience through the unique set of challenges currently facing him and his colleagues. They include a new media landscape in which upstart media platforms have siphoned audiences away from the legacy media, the traditional home for cartoonists. On top of that, an increasingly threatening political environment has put satirists in crosshairs and political cartoonists face competition from Artificial Intelligence programs that feed, without pay or credit, off artists’ work.

We’ll look at how cartoonists are adapting and at the future prospects for visual satire. The lecture will close out with a live demonstration of how Kallaugher draws prominent public personalities. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: “Freedom of the Press,” an 1834 comic drawn by Honoré Daumier (Cleveland Museum of Art / Public Domain).