documenta is regarded as the most important exhibition of contemporary art, drawing attention from all over the world. It was initiated in 1955 by the artist and art educator, Arnold Bode, in Kassel. After the period of Nazi dictatorship, it was supposed to reconcile German public life with international modernity and also confront it with its own failed Enlightenment.

Nobody would have thought at that time that the exhibition, often called the Hundred Day Museum, would become an unparalleled success. Nevertheless, the twelfth documenta will be taking place in summer 2007.

The singular character of the exhibition has been preserved. Every five years, a new director is chosen and the exhibition is reinvented, a concept which to date has been affirmed by the public's interest. The number of visitors has continually risen. More than 650 thousand visitors came to Documenta11.

Under continually changing directorship, and in the equally leisurely and inexorable rhythm of five years, documenta has advanced to become an authoritative worldwide seismograph of contemporary art. At documenta it becomes manifest whether art is succeeding in grasping the world in images and whether these images have validity for its public.

Roger M. Buergel is the artistic director of documenta 12
The artistic director of documenta 12 is Roger M. Buergel, an internationally active exhibition organiser and curator who was born in Berlin in 1962. Together with the art historian, Ruth Noack, as curator, he will, in line with documenta's claims, show art from the most various regions of the world and in all conceivable media. The works should not be shown simply unrelated to each other in a line, but be put into relationship with each other.

The Leitmotifs: Three questions posed for art but also for its public
To initiate such a productive exchange, documenta poses three questions for art, and also for its public: Is humanity able to recognise a common horizon beyond all differences? Is art the medium for this knowledge? What is to be done, what do we have to learn in order to cope intellectually and spiritually with globalisation? Is that a question of aesthetic education and cultivation? What constitutes life, when everything is subtracted which does not belong essentially to life? Does art help us to penetrate to what is essential?