Naomi Beckwith has been announced as the artistic director of Documenta 16 in Kassel, Germany.
Unanimously chosen from a shortlist of 5 submissions to helm the upcoming quinquennial exhibition, Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which joined in June 2021. She has previously held various curatorial posts since 2011 at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. While at the MCA, her exhibitions and publications have focused on the impact of identity and the resonance of Black culture on multidisciplinary practices within global contemporary art.
Beckwith is only the second US curator of Documenta, after the Italian-American Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in 2012.
“This was a shock, a surprise, but also a great joy”, Beckwith said at the Kassel press conference. “I have looked at every Documenta since Documenta 12. I was obsessed with the concept of Documenta from the moment I was introduced to it. There is no other project in the world that allows such deep thought, deep research, and close work with artists. I am here as someone who is eager to learn about Kassel, eager to work with the team, eager to think about global practices from a city that is really quite global in and of itself.”
Beckwith was the selection of a six-person finding committee, including Yilmaz Dziewior, director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne; Sergio Edelsztein, a freelance curator and founder of the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv; N‘Goné Fall, an independent curator, academic and former general commissioner of the Africa2020 Season in France (appointed by Emmanuel Macron); Gridthiya Gaweewong, artistic director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok and codirector of the 2023 Thailand Biennale; Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Yasmil Raymond, an independent curator and former director at Portikus and Rector of Städelschule.
After a turbulent 15th edition curated by the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, which became mired in antisemitism controversy, the next instalment of the German quinquennial has until now faced constant turmoil. In November last year, the previous selection committee collectively resigned. Following the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel, committee member Ranjit Hoskoté in particular was targeted for signing a 2019 letter protesting a ‘Hindutva and Zionism’ event, while Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger also resigned after Documenta refused to delay the exhibition. The outgoing committee stated that: ‘In the current circumstances we do not believe that there is a space in Germany for an open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches that documenta artists and curators deserve.’
In May this year, the Documenta supervisory board announced that it would proceed with its 2027 edition, but without installing a code of conduct for its artistic director. This was among the recommendations set out by Documenta’s appointed expert advisory panel, following the previous iteration’s controversy. Then, before announcing the directorship, the Documenta supervisory board chair Sven Schoeller today said that a new code of conduct will in fact be instilled – and made publicly available in due course. ‘Our code of conduct is based on respect for human dignity, which itself is based on the necessary guarantee of artistic freedom and at the same time protects us from discrimination against human beings’, Schoeller said.
Documenta 16 is due to open in 2027.
