Vincent Honoré, a highly esteemed curator who worked at Palais de Tokyo, Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery and David Roberts Art Foundation, has died this week. He was forty-eight years old.
Honoré began his career as curator at Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, where he worked between 2001–2004. He then moved to London where he joined Tate Modern in 2004, curating exhibitions with artists including Carol Bove, Louise Bourgeois, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pierre Huyghe and Hans Haacke. In 2008, he became founding director and chief curator of DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation) in London, which he developed as a hub centred around research, production and performance. He was also the artistic director of the 13th Baltic Triennial and the Kosovo Pavilion in the 2019 Venice Biennale.
An influential curator who collaborated widely, many curators, artists, writers and other artworld community members have shared heartfelt tributes on social media, discussing how influential Honoré was for their careers, and how his thinking and programming has impacted their work. At the time of his death, Honoré was director of exhibitions at MO.CO in Montpellier. The museum confirmed his death on their social media channels, writing ‘Today we lost an extraordinary and inspirational colleague whose absence will be keenly felt at the heart of our community.’ The museum said that a public event in Honoré’s honour will be hosted there in the upcoming days.
