DOCUMENTA 16 will take place under the artistic direction of Naomi Beckwith. An American curator, scholar, and art historian, Beckwith is Deputy Director and Jennifer & David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation in New York.
Documenta is one of the most prominent art shows in the world, rivaled only by the Venice Biennale. Occurring every five years, the next edition of Documenta will be open from June 12 to Sept. 19, 2027. Andreas Hoffmann, managing director of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, announced Beckwith’s appointment this morning. She will be the first Black woman to organize the international exhibition.
“It is the honor of a lifetime to be selected as Artistic Director for documenta 16. documenta is an institution that belongs to the entire world, as much as it belongs to Kassel, as well as an institution that is in perpetual dialogue with history as much as it is a barometer of art and culture in the immediate present,” Beckwith said in a statement.
“I am humbled by the breadth of this responsibility and equally excited to share my research and ideas with this storied and generous institution: one that affords space and time for focus, deep study, exploration, experimentation, and awakenings for artists, curators, and audiences alike.”
“It is the honor of a lifetime to be selected as Artistic Director for documenta 16. documenta is an institution that belongs to the entire world, as much as it belongs to Kassel, as well as an institution that is in perpetual dialogue with history as much as it is a barometer of art and culture in the immediate present.” — Naomi Beckwith
BECKWITH JOINED the Guggenheim Museum as deputy director in 2021. She is the first Black person to hold a leadership role at the international institution since its founding nearly 90 years ago. Beckwith oversees exhibitions, collections, publications, curatorial programming, and archives and plays a key role in planning and implementing strategy, and helping to shape the museum’s vision. In addition, she engages with curatorial teams at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and has been providing guidance as collection and programming strategies develop for the forthcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
In New York, Beckwith curated “By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection,” which is currently on view through Jan. 12, 2025. At Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Beckwith is serving as guest artistic director, leading the curatorial team as it prepares for an American Season in fall 2025, a series of exhibitions and programs introducing French audiences to U.S. contemporary art.
Previously, Beckwith was a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she spent a decade (2011-2021). Among many projects at MCA Chicago, she co-curated “Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen” (2018), the first major retrospective of the New York artist and also co-curated “The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now” (2015).
Earlier in her career, Beckwith was an associate curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she organized “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations” (2010-11), the British painter’s first-ever solo museum exhibition, and “30 Seconds off an Inch” (2009–10), which featured 42 artists spanning three generations who work with non-art materials and “challenge ideas of what art can be.”
Beckwith has lectured and published widely. Her academic credentials include a master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (1999). She was a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Earlier this year, she received the 2024 David C. Driskell Prize in African American Art and Art History at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The prize recognizes exceptional contributions to the field of African American art.
Dec. 18, 2024: Kassel, Germany, Press conference announcing appointment of Naomi Beckwith as artistic director of Document 16 in 2027. | Video by documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH
In 2021, Beckwith was a member of the curatorial team that stepped up to work on “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America” after the death of Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019), the former director of Haus der Kunst in Munich (2011-18). Enwezor had conceived the exhibition as a guest curator at the New Museum in New York.
Nigerian-born Enwezor was one of the few and earliest Black curators to work on a show at the Guggenheim, when he was brought on to co-curate “In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present” in 1996. Enwezor became the first non-European and first Black artistic director of Documenta when he curated Documenta 11 in 2002. Beckwith will be the second Black person to serve as artistic director.
A six-member finding committee selected Beckwith as artistic director of Documenta 16. The committee included N’Goné Fall, an independent curator and expert on cultural policy based in Paris and Dakar; Yilmaz Dziewior, director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne; Sergio Edelsztein, an independent curator based in Berlin and Tel Aviv; Gridthiya Gaweewong, artistic director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok; Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo; and Yasmil Raymond, an independent curator in Frankfurt.
Beckwith is taking on the role as Documenta is emerging from a challenging period, dealing with controversies related to artistic freedom, antisemitism, and the political climate surrounding the war in Israel and Gaza.
“Over the past few months, we have worked purposefully on reorienting the documenta organization and laid many good foundations. The fact that today we can present Naomi Beckwith as the new Artistic Direction for the forthcoming documenta 16 exhibition in Kassel in 2027 marks the start of a new future for documenta,” said Lord Mayor Sven Schoeller, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH. “I warmly welcome Naomi Beckwith to the documenta city of Kassel and, just like the entire art and cultural sphere, I look forward with excitement and anticipation to her artistic concept. I would like to thank the high-caliber group of candidates and all those involved in the selection process. They have done documenta a great service in a difficult situation.” CT
FIND MORE about the “difficult situation” Documenta has been navigating since Documenta 15 in 2022, from Documenta, The Art Newspaper, and The New York Times. Also from The Art Newspaper, coverage of the “Fourteen-hour film on Documenta 14 foreshadows the bureaucracy and culture wars that followed”
FIND MORE “Melvin Edwards: Some Bright Morning” is currently on view at The Fridericianum in Kassel, through Feb. 9, 2025. The first extensive solo exhibition of Edwards at a European institution, features more than 50 works and will travel to Kunsthalle Bern (June 11, 2025) and at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (October 15, 2025)
BOOKSHELF
Naomi Beckwith has authored and edited many volumes. Key among them, she co-authored the exhibition catalog “Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen” and co-edited “The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now.” Beckwith also edited the catalog for Duro Olowu’s MCA Chicago exhibition “Seeing Chicago” and co-edited the catalog “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter).”
