Could Verification Impact Free Artistic Expression?

Exactly. Particularly since 100% of the potential audience are adults and therefore eligible to enter flagged parcels. Anyone who makes the choice not to verify is essentially making the choice not to view your art. That does not reduce your artistic freedom. I, for example, will continue choosing not to view your art whether it's mature or not.

Two words for you; Lemon Party.

Whatever LL does it won't ruin or deterr my freedom or artistic expression.
I have nude tiny pixel gnome whose pants just fell down in my signature, no one has noticed nor has it caused any problems for me.
I will remove it if someone finds it broadly offensive but no one has said anything.
The truth is there are probably lot of very talented artist out there in world with nudes that no one else will notice or see who won't be age verifying or even be noticed.
Only time someone usually notices nude art is when its on a avatar skin in a skin shop.

I really don't see why anyone thinks anything is going to change. We've ALWAYS been required to keep adult content in mature sims. Verification won't change that. It will simply add somewhat of an ability to keep minors out of areas they shouldn't be in. That's all.

The real question is how come every time there's a new feature a certain percentage of the forum feels the need to post about the end of the world.

One of my friends has community on mature sim but its focused on more on Artist and Writers.
Recently someone bought lot near her village.
They erected huge prim walls and opened a sex shop.
People are having sex chat in public chat.
She complained to LL they told her they can't do a thing about because she is in mature sim.
So I agree with Chosen it's not going to change anything.

to answer the question in the title...

Yes, it could

Not the end of the world, but I'm quite sure there's not a single employee of LL who thinks this is a good thing for SL as a virtual world, but rather an expedient means of addressing a thorny PR problem.

And it *does* change things: some vaguely-specified subset of things that were not sufficiently "broadly offensive" to warrant an outright ban but (presumably) were not appropriate on a PG sim are now subject to resident ARs insisting that they be put on age-restricted parcels. And to the OP's topic, some controversial art will now only be viewable by age-verified avatars. It is surely the case that some residents would AR "A Clockwork Orange" or "Piss Christ" or "Catcher in the Rye" even at this late date. Faced with those three hypothetical ARs, can we imagine three different Lindens coming up with a consistent policy response? In the past, it didn't matter that much: everybody could move freely back and forth between PG and M sims if they wanted; but now there's a pretty substantial barrier to accessing flagged material, in the form of IDV. So now, the flagging process itself actually matters--and will matter even more if the grids are merged.

Damn you and damn Google.

I must now go pluck out my eyes because they've offended me.

There should be some sort of security program that stops google from being able to find lemon party. Don't get me started on Tubgirl (Don't google it! That's an order!)