All members of Finding Committee of prestigious art exhibition Documenta resign

“The dynamics of the last few days, with their unchallenged media and public discrediting of our colleague Ranjit Hoskote, which forced him to resign from the Finding Committee, make us very doubtful if this prerequisite for any coming edition of documenta is currently given in Germany. Art requires a critical and multi-perspective examination of its diverse forms and contents to be able to resonate and develop its transformative capacity. Categorical, one sided reductions and over-simplifications of complex contexts threaten to nip any such examination in the bud,” stated the members of the Finding Committee in their resignation letter addressed to Andreas Hoffmann, Managing director, Documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Hoskote said: “The resignation of my remaining colleagues on the Finding Committee for Documenta 16 brings this unfortunate chapter in Documenta’s history to a close. In a profound sense, all our resignations, during the last few days, bring the historic trajectory of Documenta to a close. It is very clear that Documenta can no longer live up to its legendary reputation — built up by a sequence of visionary artistic directors from 1955 to the present, and especially since 1997 — as a forum hospitable to diverse ideas, multiple perspectives, to dialogue among varied positions and a fearless engagement with global urgencies, always amplifying the voices of the marginalized and dispossessed. Documenta cannot have a future if it is going to be bureaucratized, policed and ideologically throttled in a spirit antithetical to the exploratory, responsive spirit of art.”

Hoskote had resigned on November 12 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 had based its allegations on Hoskote being one of the signatories to 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”.

In his resignation letter, Hoskote said: “It is clear to me that there is no room, in this toxic atmosphere, for a nuanced discussion of the issues at stake. And now — in what strikes me as a doomed attempt to save a situation that is beyond saving — I am being asked to accept a sweeping and untenable definition of anti-Semitism that conflates the Jewish people with the Israeli state; and that, correspondingly, misrepresents any expression of sympathy with the Palestinian people as support for Hamas.”

On November 10, Israeli artist, philosopher and theorist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger had resigned from the Committee after her request to delay proceedings due to the war in Gaza was rejected.

Responding to the resignations, a press note on the Documenta website reads: “Documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH respects this decision and thanks all those involved for their dedication. It will now propose to the Supervisory Board that the selection process for documenta 16 be entirely restructured. As regards the timing, it will propose that the organizational review should first be fully completed with a resolution by the Supervisory Board on the changed structures before the process can commence afresh.”