Documenta16 Goes Big on Data Activism

The next documenta (D16) in Kassel has officially announced its key dates and initial programmatic details for the exhibition, held every five years in the German city.

Artistic director Naomi Beckwith and her team have revealed details of the exhibition's visual design, which draws inspiration from the work of the Black American activist and statistician W. E. B. Du Bois. The design references the handwritten block typography he developed for a series of posters presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, an early example of data activism.

Beckwith, the deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the first Black woman to curate the event, leads an all-female artistic team. Kassel's mayor, Sven Schoeller, has called the next edition a "start of a new future for documenta."

Running from June 12–September 19, 2027, documenta 16 will once again make Kassel the focus of the global art world.