VFour weeks after the opening of the Documenta, where anti-Semitic propaganda pictures were on display, responsibility was finally taken. The general director and managing director of the Documenta, Sabine Schormann, vacates her post: “by mutual agreement”, as they say. That was decided at a meeting of the Documenta supervisory board, which met late into the night on Friday evening and was chaired by the mayor of Kassel, Christian Geselle (SPD).
For a long time there was a bitter argument about who was responsible for the anti-Semitism scandal and who also had to answer personally. Demands for resignation had been raised against both the general director of the documenta, Sabine Schormann, and the chairman of her supervisory board, Geselle. But the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM), Claudia Roth (Greens), will also have to be asked what role she and her staff have in the decline of the most important art festival in Germany.
The mutual recriminations had recently come to a head after neither Schormann nor Geselle had accepted the invitation from the Bundestag’s culture committee. Roth complained about the “failure in planning and implementing the Documenta” and pointed out that she had already offered her support and external expertise when the first allegations arose in January.
In a statement published on documenta-fifteen.de on Tuesday, Schormann emphasized the freedom of Ruangrupa’s artistic direction and reported the Indonesian collective’s concern about not being welcome. As early as January, curators and artists “feared censorship and therefore rejected an external panel of experts,” says Schormann.
A BKM spokesman replied that these descriptions of the processes were “not applicable”. Claudia Roth was “very alienated”. Also about the lack of need to draw conclusions: “It is increasingly questionable whether the Documenta Director General can or wants to do that.”
The Kassel committee now seems to have followed Roth’s assessment, who is not a member of the Documenta supervisory board. But Schormann’s replacement comes too late. Documenta 15 is badly damaged, as is the entire institution, which is considered one of the most important art festivals in the world. Sabine Schormann no longer had the situation under control, at least since the anti-Semitic images of the Indonesian activist group Taring Padi were discovered. Until the very end, she tried to protect the curators Ruangrupa and the artist collectives, which had swelled to more than 1,500 participants. The director general – but also the chairman of the supervisory board Geselle – had always sworn to “artistic freedom”, pointing out that they did not want to allow any “censorship”.
Schormann’s poor crisis management and her miserable communication with the public left the board with no choice but to fire her. In Kassel, with the resignation, there is now – finally – the chance for independent experts to take over the processing of the incidents without being blocked by Schormann or prevented in their work, as Meron Mendel from the Anne Frank meeting place recently complained had been brought in as a consultant, but gave up shortly thereafter in exasperation. “An interim successor is initially being sought,” says the supervisory board.
Claudia Roth welcomed the dismissal of the Documenta Director General. She told the “Frankfurter Rundschau” on Saturday afternoon: “These are the first important steps towards a necessary repositioning of this important fixture for contemporary art worldwide.” For the Federal Government’s Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, the step was “overdue According to the “Bild am Sonntag”. He calls for structural consequences to be drawn, also with regard to the Israel boycott movement BDS: “Anti-Semitism must not be accepted in any form in cultural life, regardless of where the cultural workers come from,” explained Klein. The BDS resolution of the Bundestag should in future “be the binding guideline for the use of public funds in cultural funding”.
But the supervisory board, which includes Geselle and the Hessian art minister Angela Dorn (Greens), has not been released from responsibility. He also needs to review his role. “We have to realize that some crisis management processes are not going well,” said Dorn at a debate in the Hessian state parliament a few days ago. It is therefore essential that the supervisory board also deals with the processing of errors.
Not only through the exhibition of anti-Semitic pictures, “unfortunately, a lot of trust has also been lost in the course of crisis management in the past few weeks,” the supervisory board said in its statement on Saturday afternoon. He “regards it as essential that everything is done to regain this trust.” He also recommends that the shareholders’ meeting “appoint a specialist scientific support composed of scientists* on contemporary anti-Semitism, the German and global context and postcolonialism as well as art”. They should give recommendations for the processing. The selection committee of the Documenta is also to be more closely involved.
Claudia Roth’s position has been strengthened with the decision of the Documenta supervisory board. She had already presented a five-point plan to change the structure of the festival. For its part, the supervisory board now recommends “conducting an organizational analysis of the documenta and Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, which examines both the structures, including competencies and responsibilities, and the processes”. However, the communication does not say to what extent the federal government should be more involved from the point of view of Hesse and Kassel. So far, Christian Geselle had made no secret of the fact that he did not want the BKM to have greater responsibilities.