documenta

Documenta is, for 100 days every five years, the centre of the contemporary art world. The next edition is documenta 16 in 2027. The exhibition spreads across the Fridericianum, the documenta-Halle, several other historic buildings, and a great many sites in the city's parks and streets.

Outside the exhibition years the documenta legacy is still all over Kassel. Joseph Beuys's 7000 Oaks, each paired with a basalt column, are still growing throughout the city. Walter De Maria's Vertical Earth Kilometer is a brass rod sunk a kilometre into the Friedrichsplatz, marked only by a small square cap. Jonathan Borofsky's Man Walking to the Sky still strides upward from the Kulturbahnhof. Even between editions, Kassel functions as a permanent documenta exhibition.

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A story
Founded by the art teacher Arnold Bode in 1955 in part to bring modern art back into a post-Nazi Germany that had outlawed it as 'degenerate', documenta has run every five years since and now draws nearly a million visitors over its 100 days. The artistic directors are chosen anew each time and tend to set the next decade of contemporary-art conversation.

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