Claudia Roth calls for more government influence on the Documenta

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Minister of State for Culture Roth

Photo: IMAGO/Malte Ossowski/SVEN SIMON / IMAGO/Sven Simon

After the ongoing criticism of the Kassel art show Documenta and her own role, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens) is now reacting with a 5-point plan.

Before calling for “structural reforms”, she criticized the organizers of the exhibition: “The management and the artistic curatorial collective had repeatedly assured that there would be no anti-Semitism at the Documenta.

I trusted that.

That trust has been betrayed.«

The core of the paper: Roth makes future co-financing from federal funds "mandatory" dependent on having more influence.

She wants to propose a "different" legal and organizational structure to the shareholders - the state of Hesse and the city of Kassel.

Because the federal government currently has no “sufficient opportunity to participate”.

In the future, however, there must be such a “direct involvement”.

In addition to more international expertise, the "plurality of German society including the Central Council of Jews" must also be included in the organization.

The previous "local responsibility" is disproportionate to the importance of the exhibition.

Roth emphasized that she was already in talks with the Hessian Minister of Art Angela Dorn - also a Green.

In the paper, Roth also calls for the current situation to be reviewed.

There is no self-criticism, only the previous government sees it as part of the responsibility.

The withdrawal of the Federal Cultural Foundation from the Documenta supervisory board in 2018 was a “serious mistake” by the old coalition.

It is through this cultural foundation that federal funds flow to the documenta, for the current 15th edition it is 4.5 million euros.

In total, the Documenta budget is over 40 million euros.

A spokesman for the German Federal Cultural Foundation had assured SPIEGEL on Wednesday that the Documenta was a cultural lighthouse project and stressed that "the lighthouse funding is granted for several years, regardless of the respective management".

Apparently, this unreserved support has now been abandoned.

In the future, the federal government wants to combine money and influence.

However, Roth also emphasizes in this current paper that one wants to ensure the freedom of curatorial action.