Pulitzer Winner Raven Chacon Joins Documenta 16 Curatorial Team

Documenta 16 artistic director Naomi Beckwith has named Pulitzer Prize–winning artist Raven Chacon as curator-at-large, alongside three curatorial advisers: Osei Bonsu, Timea Junghaus, and Noam Segal. She announced the appointments on Thursday.

Chacon, a Diné artist, composer, and musician, became the first Indigenous artist to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2022. He has history with the quinquennial: as a member of the collective Postcommodity, he exhibited at Documenta 14 in 2017.

Who are the new advisers?

• Osei Bonsu, a British Ghanaian art historian, is senior curator of international art for Africa and its diaspora at Tate Modern.
• Timea Junghaus, an art historian and curator, is described in a release as a "leading figure in the field of contemporary art and critical thinking among the Sinti and Roma in Europe." She was founding executive director of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture in Berlin from 2017 to 2025 and curated the first Roma Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Biennale.
• Noam Segal, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, focuses on the intersection of contemporary art and technology and chairs the LG Guggenheim Award.

"I couldn't be more thrilled to work with these brilliant makers and scholars whose convictions are as strong as their commitment to collaborative practice," said Beckwith, who also serves as deputy director and chief curator at the Guggenheim.

The additions build on an all-female core curatorial team Beckwith announced last August: Carla Acevedo-Yates, Romi Crawford, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, and Xiaoyu Weng.

What can audiences expect in Kassel?

Documenta 16 runs June 12–September 19, 2027, at venues across Kassel, Germany. A release promises the exhibition "will honor artists as they navigate a world in turmoil, developing strategies and new possibilities for living together amid planetary indeterminacy. Improvisation, experimentation, and collective learning will open new paths." What that means in practice remains to be seen; the statement offers direction, not a lineup.

The appointment news arrives against a difficult backdrop. Last month, Beckwith told the German publication Die Zeit that "a few" invited artists had declined to participate in Documenta 16. Asked why, she said: "Some have the impression that they are not free in Germany to show what they want to show. Others criticize the stance that Germany has taken on the Gaza war."

Documenta 15 in 2022 drew controversy when some politicians alleged antisemitism at the exhibition and among participating artists. In response, Documenta adopted a new code of conduct that explicitly defined antisemitism, including a statement that criticism of Israel is "a racist endeavor."

What does this change for the quinquennial? Beckwith now leads a team spanning Indigenous art, African diaspora scholarship, Roma cultural advocacy, and art-and-technology research — a breadth that signals Documenta 16 intends to widen its lens considerably. Whether that composition can also ease the political pressures that shadowed the last edition is the question Kassel 2027 will have to answer.