Documenta, which every five years transforms the sleepy German city of Kassel into the center of the art world, includes more than 1,500 participants and – for the first time since its launch in 1955 – was curated by a collective, Indonesia’s Ruangrupa. But on Saturday its supervisory board expressed “deep disappointment” at the “clearly anti-Semitic” content after the exhibition opened in June, saying an agreement had been reached with Sabine Schormann, the director general, to “end [her] contract”. An interim director will be appointed, the statement added. Two days after the show opened to the public, one of the works on display by the Indonesian art group Taring Padi came under fire for depictions that both the German government and Jewish groups say went too far. The offending mural depicts a pig wearing a helmet with the name “Mossad”. In the same work, a man is depicted with side-locks often associated with Orthodox Jews, fangs and bloodshot eyes, and wearing a black hat with SS insignia. The project was covered up after Jewish leaders and the Israeli embassy in Germany expressed “disgust”, but the controversy has overshadowed an event now in its 15th edition. Sabine Schormann: resignation. Photo: Sascha Steinbach/EPA Germany’s culture minister, Claudia Roth, supported Schormann’s departure and called for an investigation into how the anti-Semitic work was accepted in the first place. “The necessary conclusions must be drawn,” Roth was quoted as saying by the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. Documenta’s supervisory board promised a full investigation, admitting that “unfortunately a great deal of trust has been lost” and vowing to prevent further “anti-Semitic incidents”. But Remko Leemhuis, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, accused Documenta of not going far enough and “still not understanding the problem.” According to Bild newspaper, Leemhuis was particularly critical of the board’s reference to “accusations of anti-Semitism”, as the pieces were, he said, clearly “anti-Semitic”. The contemporary art event had been mired in controversy for months over the inclusion of a group of Palestinian artists strongly critical of the Israeli occupation. Ruangrupa has come under fire for including the collective The Question of Funding over its ties to the BDS movement which is boycotting Israel. BDS was labeled anti-Semitic by the German parliament in 2019 and banned from receiving federal funds. About half of Documenta’s 42 million euro ($42.4 million) budget comes from public funds. Kassel was home to a huge forced labor camp during the second world war and was heavily bombed by the Allies. Documenta aimed to put Germany back on the cultural map after the Nazi campaign to crush the avant-garde. The exhibition, which runs until September 25, now ranks with the Venice Biennale among the world’s leading contemporary art exhibitions.
