Enlarge image
Claudia Roth with Sabine Schormann at the opening of the Documenta in Kassel (June 18, 2022)
Photo: Rüdiger Wölk / IMAGO
In the anti-Semitism scandal surrounding the Documenta art exhibition, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth distanced herself from General Director Sabine Schormann.
After a statement on the scandal distributed by Schormann, Roth said on Thursday in Berlin that she was "very surprised and alienated" by the statement.
Roth accused Schormann that her statements and descriptions of the processes in the past few months had not been accurate and questioned Schormann's will to clarify.
In her statement distributed on Tuesday evening, Schormann wrote, among other things, that as managing director she was not responsible for the artistic side and that the first allegations of anti-Semitism, which had already arisen in January, had been dealt with by the federal government and the state of Hesse.
On the recommendation of Roth, among others, the curator Emily Dische-Becker was appointed as the coordinator of a five-person advisory team.
Will to enlightenment "increasingly questionable"
Roth, on the other hand, explained that the federal government had made the proposal of a committee with the five experts Manuela Consonni, Raphael Gross, Edna Harel-Fisher and Meron Mendel.
"This suggestion was not pursued further by the documenta, but it prepared a series of talks that were later canceled and which did not correspond to this suggestion in terms of content or personnel."
Roth accused Schormann of still lacking a »complete explanation of how a clearly anti-Semitic work of art could have been exhibited« at the Documenta.
The necessary consequences of this scandal are still pending.
»It is increasingly questionable whether the Documenta Director General can or wants to do that.«
How the documenta will continue is currently open.
The "Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine" (HNA) recently reported that there should be a special meeting of the supervisory board in Kassel on Friday evening.
The trigger for the scandal was a large poster by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi, which was clearly anti-Semitic.
The poster was only removed after outraged reactions.
nga/afp