Achim Borchardt-Hume, who was director of exhibitions at Tate Modern, has died. The curator had recently opened Anicka Yi’s commission for the London institution’s Turbine Hall, and The Making of Rodin, which focused on the French sculptor’s plaster works.
Taking on the role in 2012, he had previously been responsible for exhibitions by artists including Steve McQueen, Doris Salcedo, the Kabakovs, Robert Rauschenberg, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder and in 2014 staged the first major Malevich retrospective in the UK.
‘Museums play an ever more important role in civic discourse’ he once said. ‘They are places where we can test and contest memories, analyse and debate the present, and rehearse new identities and modes of coexistence for the future.’
Borchardt-Hume first joined the Tate in 2005 as curator of modern and contemporary art, organising shows including Mark Rothko (2008) and Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (2006). In 2009 he left for a three year stint as chief curator of the Whitechapel Gallery. There he staged exhibitions for Zarina Bhimji, Mel Bochner, Giuseppe Penone, Walid Raad and Wilhelm Sasnal.
In 2012 he organised Gerhard Richter’s first exhibition in Lebanon at the Beirut Art Center.
Born in Düren, Germany, he left aged 18 to study art history, first in Bonn, then Rome, settling in London in 1992. There he embarked on a Ph.D with Essex University, writing on the art and politics of Fascist Italy. Curatorial roles at the Serpentine Gallery and the Barbican Art Gallery followed.
