Carla Acevedo-Yates, Romi Crawford, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, and Xiaoyu Weng join Beckwith in shaping the 2027 edition of the landmark exhibition
The documenta 16 artistic team: Romi Crawford, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Xiaoyu Weng, Carla Acevedo-Yates, and Naomi Beckwith (from left to right), Kassel 2025. © documenta and Museum Fridericianum gGmbH, Photo: Nicolas Wefers
In December 2024, Naomi Beckwith was appointed Artistic Director of documenta 16 by the international selection committee. Now, just under two years ahead of the exhibition’s opening, Beckwith has announced her core artistic team. Together with Carla Acevedo-Yates, Romi Crawford, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, and Xiaoyu Weng, she will develop the exhibition, publications, and program for one of the most influential events in contemporary art.
“I am grateful to be working with this team on documenta 16,” Beckwith shared. “I admire their independence of spirit and thought, which is characterized by a high regard for artists and audiences alike. We look forward to exploring the diverse fields of contemporary artistic practices together and engaging in dialogue with the pressing questions shaping our planet’s social and cultural landscapes and their futures.”
documenta 16 will take place in Kassel from 12 June to 19 September 2027.
The team behind documenta 16
Carla Acevedo-Yates
A curator and scholar, Acevedo-Yates researches contemporary art from the Americas, with a particular focus on the Caribbean and Latin America. Her curatorial practice highlights the diaspora as a site of cultural production, reshaping political and social life. She has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the MSU Broad Art Museum, where she curated Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s – Today and Entre Horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico.
Romi Crawford
An educator, writer, and professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Crawford brings a collaborative and experimental approach to art historiography. Her projects often revisit collective art-making practices, improvisational formats, and pedagogies born out of unequal social and economic conditions. She is also the founder of the Black Arts Movement School Modality and the New Art School Modality, two open-access platforms redefining art education.
Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro
A writer and editor, Castro’s work is deeply rooted in archives, poetry, and philosophy. She is the editor of Dream of Europe: Selected Seminars and Interviews, 1984–1992 by Audre Lorde, and consulting editor for In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love by Joy James. Her publications honour the legacies of poets, thinkers, and philosophers often excluded from the canon, weaving hidden inscriptions into the fabric of contemporary thought.
Xiaoyu Weng
Weng is a curator and writer who has worked across international contexts, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Kadist Foundation, and the Ural Industrial Biennial. Her practice unfolds in close collaboration with artists and often bridges disciplines and geographies, developing hybrid frameworks that foreground contemporary cultural exchange and connection.
Looking ahead
With Beckwith’s vision and her team’s wide-ranging expertise in transcultural curating, experimental pedagogy, diasporic histories, and global collaborations, documenta 16 promises to be an edition that grapples with urgent contemporary questions while holding space for diverse artistic practices and audiences.
As the countdown begins, the announcement signals the first glimpse into how one of the world’s most significant art exhibitions is being shaped.
documenta 16 takes place in Kassel from 12 June to 19 September 2027. For more information, visit documenta.de.
