documenta archiv
The founding of the documenta archiv goes back to Arnold Bode. At the beginning of the 1960s, the inventor of the documenta wanted to continue the art show with an institution at its side that would be both a scientific backbone and a memory of past exhibitions for the organizers. The documenta archiv, initially a municipal institution, began its work in 1961. Since then, the multimedia holdings of this multifaceted repository of knowledge have grown steadily with each subsequent edition of documenta. In a symbolic act, the documenta archiv was handed over to documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH on July 15, 2015. The aim is to raise the international profile of this unique institution.
As one of the most important archives of contemporary art, it is now responsible for the production, documentation, archiving and scientific processing of text, image and multimedia sources relating to the major exhibition in Kassel and is closely interlinked with the artistic, curatorial, organizational and technical teams of documenta and the Museum Fridericianum.
As a member of the Arbeitskreis selbstständiger Kultur-Institute e.V. (AsKI), the documenta archiv has grown into an active science and art institution that initiates exhibition and research projects with national and international partners and invites artistic interventions along its own objects - a place of interdisciplinary documenta research for students, fellows and guest researchers from all over the world. The focus is on the art system of the 20th and 21st centuries, on object- and material-based questions about contemporary art, the history of exhibition practice and its medially mediated forms of presentation. Special fields of research concern the boundaries of the documentary in the fields of photography, film and the digital arts and humanities. The focus is currently on the early documenta exhibitions, their organizational and personnel structures intertwined with the art world, as well as the mechanisms of art historical canonization processes.
One of the cores of the documenta archiv are the original documenta documents that were created during the preparations for the exhibition and during the documenta itself. These include analog and digital documents, emails, chats or classic correspondence, sketches, concepts, invitations, flyers, press documents, websites, photo and video documentation, art objects and much more. The archive's media collection alone contains around 40,000 analog and 45,000 digital images, 5,000 videos and 650 audio recordings of works and projects by participating artists. There is also a comprehensive press archive: around 45,000 press folders and 660 files on individual artists as well as around 250,000 systematically collected newspaper clippings reflect the history of documenta.
The documenta archiv also houses one of the largest specialized libraries for modern art in Germany. The art library contains around 120,000 volumes, 71,000 of which are exhibition catalogs alone. The so-called ephemera are of particular importance: Brochures, leaflets, invitation cards, private prints, academic writings and gallery catalogs. The documenta archiv is constantly expanding its holdings by acquiring important bequests and estates of documenta artists, curators and key players in the history of art and exhibitions. The centerpieces are the estate of Arnold Bode, which contains correspondence as well as numerous of his paintings, drawings and design objects, and that of the artist and university lecturer Harry Kramer: kinetic sculptures, models, sketches and numerous writings. One of the most recent additions is the extensive estate of the theorist and artist Bazon Brock.
