What is Documenta, the art show from which curator Ranjit Hoskote has resigned?

Hoskote resigned after the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung accused him of “anti-Semitism” and sympathising with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which argues against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

The newspaper recalled that Hoskote had signed a BDS India petition in 2019, protesting against a discussion hosted by the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai on “Zionism and Hindutva”. Documenta said the petition had “explicitly anti-Semitic content”.

Exhibition and significance

The art exhibition takes place every five years in the city of Kassel in central Germany. The fifteenth edition was held in 2022. The 100-day event has a budget of more than $40 million, and is funded partly by the city of Kassel, state of Hessen, and the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

Documenta is less market-driven than the biennales (also large-scale international contemporary art exhibitions that are non-commercial and take place in cities around the world), and prides itself on inviting artists who might not necessarily be well-known in Europe, but have done substantive and exceptional work.

Some of the most powerful people in art attend, and participation brings great prestige and assures a spotlight on the artist.

Ranjit Hoskote.

Participants and selection

A selection panel of experts from around the world invites pioneering figures in contemporary art to apply to be Artistic Director of Documenta’s forthcoming edition, and to pick the most promising format from the concepts presented.

After Ettinger’s and Hoskote’s resignations, the Finding Committee for Documenta 16, to be held in 2027, has Gong Yan of the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art, Paris-based writer and curator Simon Njami, Vienna-based curator Kathrin Rhomberg, and Colombia-born curator María Inés Rodríguez.

The last edition, in 2022, was curated by the Indonesian artists’ collective ruangrupa, the first Asian curator of Documenta.

At Documenta 14 (2017), Indian modernists were represented by Nilima Sheikh, Ganesh Haloi, Amrita Sher-Gil, Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, Binod Behari Mukherjee, and K G Subramanyan, and contemporaries Amar Kanwar, Gauri Gill, and Nikhil Chopra.

History of Documenta

The exhibition was founded in 1955. It was conceptualised by the Kassel-based painter and professor of art Arnold Bode “to bring Germany back into dialogue with the rest of the world after the end of World War II, and to connect the international art scene through a ‘presentation of twentieth century art’,” according to the Documenta website.

Nazi Germany had removed the works of several internationally renowned artists from museums, allegedly because they were an “insult to German feeling”. The first edition of Documenta showcased major movements in art including Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, the Blaue Reiter, and Futurism, and works of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Paul Klee, and Oskar Schlemmer.

Sensitivity on anti-Semitism

The founding premise of the exhibition notwithstanding, research has flagged its early Nazi connections — including the finding that the art historian Werner Haftmann, who guided Bode, was a member of the Sturmabteilung, abbreviated as SA, literally ‘Storm Troopers’, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

A 2021 exhibition titled ‘Documenta: Politics and Art’, at Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum, studied Documenta’s political associations and agenda. A statement on the museum’s website says: “Almost half of those who participated in the organisation of the first documenta had been members of the Nazi party, the SA or the SS (Schutzstaffel, the Nazi paramilitary that was the most responsible for the murder of some 6 million Jews and millions of others). By contrast, works by Jewish or communist artists who had been persecuted or murdered were not present at documenta…”

Sabine Schormann, general director of Documenta 15 (2022) stepped down after the exhibition was accused of featuring anti-Semitic imagery. Some Jewish groups accused Documenta of anti-Semitism after a Palestinian collective was included in Documenta 15.

The edition saw the removal of an artwork titled “People’s Justice” by the Indonesian art collective Taring Padi that featured a soldier-like figure, wearing the Star of David, a scarf, and a helmet with “Mossad” written on it, who was depicted as a pig. Another figure was depicted with the sidelocks associated with orthodox Jews, fangs and red eyes, and wearing a black hat with an SS insignia.

On Twitter, Israel’s embassy in Germany said Documenta was promoting “Goebbels-style propaganda”. A report by a commission of experts to investigate the allegations against Documenta 15 said it was “an echo chamber for Israel-related antisemitism, and sometimes pure antisemitism”.