Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, the head of the biggest contemporary art museum in Africa and first African woman appointed to lead the Venice Biennale, has died Saturday, the Zeitz MOCAA museum said.
Born in 1967, Kouoh had headed the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), in South Africa’s capital Cape Town, since 2019.
She was chosen last year to curate the next Biennale — one of the world’s most important contemporary art shows — opening in May 2026.
The Zeitz MOCAA “received news in the early hours of this morning, of the sudden passing of Koyo Kouoh, our beloved Executive Director and Chief Curator”, the museum said on social media.
The Venice Biennale said in a statement it was “deeply saddened and dismayed” to learn of Kouoh’s “sudden and untimely passing”.
“Her passing leaves an immense void in the world of contemporary art,” it said, adding that Kouoh had been set to present the 2026 Biennale’s title and theme in Venice on May 20 this year.
Born in 1967 and brought up between the Cameroon coastal city of Douala and Switzerland, Kouoh positioned the Zeitz MOCAA at the cutting edge of contemporary art by championing Pan-Africanism and promoting artists from the continent and its diaspora.
“Africa is for me an idea that goes beyond borders. It’s a history that goes beyond borders,” she told AFP in an interview in 2023.
When announcing her appointment to lead the legendary Venitian art show, Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco had hailed her as a “curator, scholar and influential public figure” who would bring the “most refined, young and disruptive intelligences” to the sprawling 130-year-old exhibition.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Saturday expressed her “deep sorrow” for the curator’s “premature” death.
