Naomi Beckwith, Artistic Director of documenta 16 since December 2024, announced her women-only Artistic Team. Carla Acevedo-Yates - contemporary art curator and researcher, Romi Crawford - writer and professor of Visual and Critical Studies, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro - writer and editor and Xiaoyu Weng - curator and writer will collaborate with Beckwith to deliver the exhibition of 2027.
“I am grateful to walk with this team in crafting documenta 16. I admire their independence of spirit and thought which, for each, is fueled by their generosity to artists and audiences alike. We are all excited to traverse, together, myriad fields of current artistic practices and to be in dialogue with the immense issues shaping our planet’s manifold social and cultural landscapes and its futures.” said Naomi Beckwith.
The initiative is considered as unprecedented since it is the first time that the prestigious exhibition will be entirely guided by women.
The announcement came in the aftermath of controversy triggered by a new code of conduct of the organisation. Including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, the code of conduct adopted in February 2025 had been widely criticised by free speech advocates as conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism.This was not the first backlash to the exhibition. In 2022 documenta 15 was faced with antisemitism accusations, along with the vandalization of an exhibition space planned for the Palestinian art collective The Question of Funding. In 2023 the finding committee submitted a joint resignation letter expressing their “grave concern for the future of Documenta”.
Documenta 16 is scheduled from the 12th of June to the 19th of September 2027 in Kassel, Germany.
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Image featuring the Artistic Team for documenta 16: Romi Crawford, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Xiaoyu Weng, Carla Acevedo-Yates, and Naomi Beckwith (f.l.t.r.), Kassel 2025. © documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH. Photo: Nicolas Wefers.
