Claudia Roth distances herself from Documenta director Schormann
“I clearly demand that at least the managing director Schormann be fired”
A heavily criticized installation at the Documenta in Kassel is being dismantled. Now the calls for a reappraisal of the scandal are getting louder. Michel Friedman speaks plain language: He calls for the dismissal of General Director Sabine Schormann.
After Documenta director Sabin Schormann published a long statement on Tuesday evening about the anti-Semitism scandal at the art show, the Federal Minister of Culture is now stepping back. It is questionable whether Schormann is at all interested in clarification, according to a spokesman for Claudia Roth.
NAfter a statement by Documenta Director General Sabine Schormann on how to deal with anti-Semitism, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) clearly distanced herself from the director of the art exhibition. “These statements and Ms. Schormann’s descriptions of the processes in the past few months are not accurate,” said a spokesman for Roth on Thursday in Berlin. Roth was “very surprised and alienated”.
A complete explanation as to how a clearly anti-Semitic work of art could have been installed at this documenta is still pending, “as well as the necessary conclusions to be drawn from it,” Roth’s spokesman continued: “It is increasingly questionable whether the documenta general director able or willing to afford.”
Above all, Roth rejected Schormann’s description of the convening of an external committee with experts to accompany the Documenta. Such a proposal with specific names had been made by the Minister of State for Culture, explained Roth’s spokesman. This was not followed up by the Documenta. Instead, the Documenta prepared a series of talks that were later canceled and “which corresponded neither to the content nor to the personnel” proposed by the Minister of State for Culture.
In a statement distributed on Tuesday evening, Schormann had defended himself against the ongoing criticism of the art exhibition’s handling of the allegations of anti-Semitism. In it she writes that in January, when the first allegations were made, the artistic direction and the now 1,500 artists rejected an external panel of experts for review because they felt they were under general suspicion and feared censorship. According to Schormann, however, after talks with Roth, among others, there was a five-person advisory committee, apparently with other participants than Roth had proposed.
In her statement, Schormann describes the idea of the series of talks as a result of a recommendation by Roth, among others, to “go into further dialogue”. Schormann explained that the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art had received information on the podiums.
At the beginning of “Documenta fifteen” the work “People’s Justice” by the Indonesian group Taring Padi was exhibited, on which anti-Semitic depictions could be seen. After public protests, the work of art was initially draped with scarves a few days after the start of the exhibition in June and shortly thereafter removed from the art show by decision of the documenta supervisory board. The incident triggered massive criticism.