Documenta Presentation

The Documenta is presented in Kassel in five main exhibition halls: three old palace-type-places, one modern permanent building, and one temporary exhibition hall. I very much liked the old spaces; they were varied without being obtrusive. Photo above is in the Museum Friedricianum, and you can see how the artworks are successfully interacting with eachother: sitting in Ai Weiwei’s chairs to watch a video by Hito Steyerl (about a woman searching for a bondage photo of herself...) and underneath see a performance on the Trisha Brown sculpture "Floor of the Forest."
The temporary building, the Aue-Pavillion, was a big disappointment. It was conceived as a greenhouse for art, but placed in a large green park, it was more like the kind of buildings you find at a country fair. I kept expecting to turn the corner and be greeted by a pie contest or show cows. The ceiling felt oppressively low, the lighting was too weak and the temporary walls did nothing for the large paintings. The work really suffered and I was bummed.
But, later I saw another space, the Schloss Wilhelmshohe, a museum for old Northern European Masterworks. Lots of swirling flesh and pinched breasts. And intersperced were modern works dealing with sexuality and identity. It was GREAT! Made the old stuff come alive, made the new work fit into art historical context.