Okwui Enwezor, curator of Documenta and Venice Biennale, has died aged 55

Okwui Enwezor, who helped to push the geographical borders of art history and the art world and was the first African curator of Documenta and the Venice Biennale, has died aged 55.

Enwezor stepped down from his post as director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich in June last year for health reasons. Last August, he said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that he had been battling cancer for three years and had undergone a range of different treatments.

“We have lost a brilliant intellectual, a man of the world whose encyclopaedic knowledge encompassed more than art, and a sensitive advocate of art,” Bavarian Culture Minister Bernd Sibler said in a statement. “I am grateful to him for broadening our perspective.”

Born in Kalaba, Nigeria, in 1963, Enwezor studied political science in the U.S. He entered the contemporary art world by founding a magazine focussed