Vincent HonorÉ (1975-2023)

French curator and writer Vincent Honoré, noted for elevating the work of women and queer artists, died November 30 at the age of forty-eight. French media outlets reported the cause as suicide. Considered one of the best and most sensitive curators of his generation, Honoré was especially beloved, having exhibited, mentored, or otherwise helped cadres of younger artists and cultural workers over the course of his two-and-a-half-decade career. At his death, he was director of exhibitions at MO.CO Montpellier, which he had helped to establish in 2019. “The loss of our extraordinary and inspiring colleague will leave a huge void in our community,” wrote MO.CO Montpellier in astatement.

“His legacy will live on through all the exhibitions he conceived, including the current Huma Bhabha show, and through the young artists he mentored and supported.”RelatedFORGOTTEN BOTTICELLI PAINTING RECOVERED FROM PRIVATE HOMEMARK BRADFORD WINS GETTY PRIZE Born in 1975, Honoré studied comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and worked briefly as a teacher. “[I] then quickly recognized that as much as I loved teaching, I was not made for the structure of the public education,” he toldArtmap Londonin 2015. Honoré began his career at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where he served as an assistant curator from 2001 to 2004. He spent the next four years at London’s Tate Modern, where he organized solo exhibitions by Louise Bourgeois, Carol Bove, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Hans Haacke, Pierre Huyghe, Catherine Sullivan, and Jeff Wall, among others. In 2008, he assumed the role of founding director and chief curator of London’s DRAF (David Roberts Art Foundation), which was dedicated to research, production, and performativity. In that capacity, he curated solo exhibitions of artists including Neil Beloufa, Keren Cytter, Rosemarie Trockel, and Oscar Tuazon; among those he drew in to present performances and live events are John Bock, Rodney Graham, Huyghe, Sarah Lucas, and Laure Prouvost.

He later worked as senior curator at London’s Hayward Gallery, where he staged notable exhibitions including 2018’s “DRAG: Self-Portrait and Body Politics,” examining the use of drag as a way of performing gender and featuring artists including Robert Mapplethorpe, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Cindy Sherman, and Sin Wai Kin. The following year, he mounted the group show “Kiss My Genders,” which investigated issues of gender fluidity and included work by Jimmy DeSana, Juliana Huxtable, Catherine Opie, Planningtorock, and Tejal Shah, among others. Honoré additionally curated the 13th Baltic Triennial in 2018 and the Kosovo pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, the latter featuring Albban Muja’s works exploring conflict and memory. “My exhibitions are often performative as they tend to change throughout the duration of the show, but they are also un-conclusive,” Honoré told contemporary art magazineThis Is Tomorrowin 2012. “I consider exhibitions as open systems and I think that is something that can definitely be read in my work.

Overall, I like proposing introductions, rather than conclusions. I like things that are unresolved.” In 2011, Honoré co-founded the journalDrawing Room Confessions, titled after a parlor game played by Marcel Proust and the Surrealists. Each issue focused on a single artist and featured only conversations and texts. He wrote frequently forCura MagazineandMousse Magazineand contributed texts to catalogues and books for Nina Beier, Daniel Buren, Bethan Huws, Huyghe, Lucas, and Bruce McLean, among others..