Documenta Dispenses with Code of Conduct for Artistic Director, Plows Ahead with Next Edition

The organizers ofDocumenta, Kassel’s quinquennial art festival, have said that they are proceeding with the event’s sixteenth edition but that they will not put in place a code of conduct for its artistic director. The announcement contradicts one of the recommendations set out by an expert advisory panel appointed by Documenta’s supervisory board in the wake of its fifteenth iteration.

Roiled byallegations of antisemitism, the 2022 editionlostartists and advisers in the course of its run and saw thedepartureof longtime managing director Sabine Schormann. On the recommendation of past artistic directors, a committee of six international curators was assembled and tasked with appointing the artistic director for Documenta 16. Last November, however, Israeli artist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger and Indian poet Ranjit Hoskoteresignedfrom the panel, the former citing an inability to travel for committee meetings owing to the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the latter after being denounced by Documenta for having signed a 2019lettercomparing Zionism in Israel to Hindu nationalism in India. Hoskote in his resignation condemned both the attack by Hamas and the response by Israel. Days later, the remaining members of the committee—Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg, and María Inés Rodríguez—resigneden masse, citing “grave concern for the future of Documenta” as behind their exodus.

Now, Documenta officials have said the exhibition and the Fridericianum, one of its main venues, will adopt their own codes of conduct, but that the yet-to-be-named artistic director will not be obliged to do so. Instead, the artistic director will be required to give a public talk explaining their curatorial theme and confirming “their understanding of respect for human dignity and how this is to be ensured in the exhibition they are to curate.”

Also of note, the supervisory board is to be whittled down from twelve members to between five and nine, including a representative from the city of Kassel, one from the state of Hesse, and two members of the federal government. As well, Documenta will establish a scientific advisory board comprising six people from the fields of arts, culture, and science.

“I am convinced that with the toolbox we have now adopted, we are ideally positioned to make great strides towards Documenta 16,” said Documenta managing director Andreas Hoffmann in a statement.