Today at artnet news, Hili Perlson reports on new revelations regarding the financing and budget for documenta 14. If the revelations are true, they spell fresh trouble for the beleaguered exhibition. You can read an excerpt from Perlson’s report below, or the full piece here.
According to HNA, which was the first outlet to break news of the deficit, the initial report by auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that another surprise soon followed: In February 2017, Szymczyk advanced a new idea to transport the collection of the cash-strapped Athens Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) to Kassel—a budget-busting conceit that would involve shipping some 230 additional works of varying sizes from Greece—and threatened to resign if his plan was rejected.
Hilgen reportedly agreed to Szymczyk’s plan without informing the shareholders (the report by PwC does not indicate whether this constitutes a breach of trust). What’s clear is that the concept of bringing documenta to Athens, with which Szymczyk won the position of artistic director in the first place, was approved on condition that only 10 percent of the overall budget would go to the Greek part of the show. At the beginning of the year, €2 million was earmarked for Athens, but in the spring documenta announced that the budget could not be broken down by location, as it was “a single artistic project.”