Achim Borchardt-Hume was born in Düren, Germany in 1965. He received a PhD in art history from the University of Essex in 2003. Subsequently working in curatorial positions in renowned London galleries such as the Serpentine and Tate Modern, Borchardt-Hume has curated several major, large-scale international exhibitions.
Curator and academic, Achim Borchardt-Hume was born to Günter Borchardt and Anna Maria Struck in Düren, West Germany on 25 September 1965. He left his home city to pursue an education, winning an exchange scholarship at the Università La Sapienza, Rome, and in 1990 taking an MA in art history, Italian literature, psychology and Christian archaeology at the University of Bonn, one of Germany’s top universities. In 1992, he moved to London, England, where in 2003 he earned his PhD from the University of Essex, focussing on the art and politics of Fascist Italy.
Borchardt-Hume began his career working as an Exhibition Organiser at the Serpentine Gallery, London, between 1999 and 2005. There he co-curated the first UK exhibition of Stan Douglas (2002), showing the world premiere of Douglas’ film Journey Into Fear (2001). After a brief period as Acting Head of the Barbican Art Gallery, he became Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tate between 2005 and 2009. In that period, Borchardt-Hume curated several large-scale exhibitions at Tate Modern and edited their accompanying catalogues, including Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World (2006) and Rothko (2008–09), for which Rothko’s 16 Seagram murals were brought together for the first time since their inception. He also oversaw Shibboleth (2007) at Tate Modern, a ‘technically challenging installation’ by Doris Salcedo which ‘required specialist engineering to construct a 167-metre-long crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall’ (Grant, 2021).
In 2009 Borchardt-Hume became Chief Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, where over a period of three years he was responsible for several exhibitions, including Walid Raad: Miraculous Beginnings (2010–11), Willhelm Sasnal (2011–12), Zarina Bhimji (2012) and Mel Bochner: If the Colour Changes (2012). In 2012, Borchardt-Hume returned to Tate Modern as Head of Exhibitions, becoming Director of Exhibitions and Programmes in 2017. There he worked with the Director, Frances Morris, to shape the museum’s future as it grew in size and ambition, opening its extension in 2016 (Grant, 2021). He subsequently curated several major exhibitions at Tate Modern, such as Malevich (2014), Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy (2018), and The Making of Rodin (2021). Through such exhibitions and their accompanying texts, Borchardt-Hume ‘sought to place the achievements of artists in the context of the cultural and political realities of the contemporary world’, for instance positioning Picasso 1932 alongside Hitler’s contemporaneous rise to power (Serota, 2021). In this way and more, Borchardt-Hume ‘liked to challenge art orthodoxy’, and enjoyed persuading others to see a different point of view (Grant, 2021).
Achim Borchardt-Hume died suddenly in London, England on 1 November 2021, at the age of 56. In a statement, Tate wrote that ‘Achim leaves behind an extraordinary legacy, not just at Tate Modern, but across the international art world’ (Artforum, 2021). He is survived by his wife, Laura, whom he married in 1995, and their children, Saskia, Tom and Matti.