Documenta 16 Names New Selection Committee After Last Year’s Mass Resignation

Documenta has officially revealed the replacement selection committee charged with finding the famed German quinquennial’s next artistic director, a search that is still ongoing because the original committee resigned en masse last year.

The new six-person selection committee is comprised of Yilmaz Dziewior, Sergio Edelsztein, N’Goné Fall, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Mami Kataoka, and Yasmil Raymond, all but one of whom have previously curated at least one major biennial.

This group notably includes three people based in Germany (Dziewior, Edelsztein, and Raymond), whereas the prior committee included none.

And there is one Israeli, Edelsztein, a gesture that will be seen as a response to the ongoing fallout over Documenta 15 in 2022, which faced widespread allegations of antisemitism. There was also an Israeli artist on the prior committee, but she resigned in response to the situation facing her country after the October 7 Hamas attack.

Within Germany, Dziewior and Raymond are already well-known, the former for directing the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the latter for leading the Portikus museum and the famed Städelschule art school in Frankfurt until earlier this year. Edelsztein, who splits his time between Berlin and Tel Aviv, was the longtime director and chief curator of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv, which he also founded.

Fall previously served as editorial director of Revue Noire, an important journal devoted to African art. Gaweewong is artistic director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Kataoka is director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.

The six curators are now filling in six others who abruptly departed this past November. Around the same time that the Israeli artist Bracha L. Ettinger left, Indian poet Ranjit Hoskote became the subject of controversy after the German press resurfaced a BDS letter that he had signed; he also resigned as a result.

Then, decrying what they called a lack of “an open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches that documenta artists and curators deserve,” the four other curators—Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg, and María Inés Rodríguez—also left.

The mass resignation only added to fears that Documenta may never be able to recover from the scandals that beset 2022’s Documenta 15, which spurred scrutiny over artworks that contained antisemitic imagery and pro-Palestine politics. But Documenta leadership has assured that the next edition, planned for 2027, will still happen, albeit at a date that was not specified in Wednesday’s announcement.

Yet even amid those assurances, statements from Documenta’s leaders have caused some to worry about what form the next show will take. Although Documenta will not enforce a code of conduct for its next artistic director, it will expand its supervisory board to include greater representation for the city of Kassel, where Documenta takes place once every five years, and the state of Hesse, where Kassel is located.

There will also be a Scientific Advisory Board of experts and a requirement that the next artistic director give a talk about “their understanding of respect for human dignity and how this is to be ensured in the exhibition they are to curate.”

Of the new selection committee, Documenta managing director Andreas Hoffmann said, “I am certain that the expert and multi-perspective make-up of the new Finding Committee will lead to a forward-looking proposal for the Artistic Direction. This lays the foundation for the international art world to once again be a familiar and welcome guest in Kassel.”