Elvira Dyangani Ose, the former director of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba), has been appointed the artistic director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MoCAA) in Cape Town. She replaces Koyo Kouoh, the former executive director and chief curator, who died last year, and will take up the post in October.
Zeitz MoCAA exhibits, collects, preserves and researches contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, according to its website. “Under [Dyangani Ose's] artistic leadership, Zeitz MoCAA will continue to present bold contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora,” the institution said in a statement.
As part of the appointment, the Zeitz MoCAA has changed the former job title of “chief curator” to “artistic director”. “During the process, we identified that we would split the roles to have one person focusing on the creative, artistic, and culture of the organisation—Elvira Dyangani Ose, working alongside another person looking after the operations, finances and corporate governance, and that is Fawaz Mustapha, managing director,’ said David Green, Zeitz Mocaa co-founder and co-chair, at a press briefing. “This will be a joint leadership.”
Previously, Dyangani Ose was the director of the Showroom London and held curatorial roles at Creative Time in New York and at Tate Modern where she contributed to the development of the institution’s first strategy for collecting art from Africa and its diaspora, a statement says. She served as a curator at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Dyangani Ose is also a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University in New York.
According to the Spanish newspaper El País, Dyangani Ose's tenure at Macba was cut short after the museum’s governing body ruled that her new role as director of the second Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennial, which opens in October, was “incompatible” with her post. Earlier this year, she resigned as a member of the Venice Biennale jury over the participation of Russian and Israel.
The founding collection of Zeitz MoCAA, which opened in September 2017, is made up of the holdings of Jochen Zeitz, the former chief executive of Puma. The Thomas Heatherwick-designed museum, housed in a waterfront grain silo complex, was hailed as a landmark institution for the study and acquisition of contemporary African art.
Mark Coetzee, who died in 2022, was the inaugural executive director and chief curator at Zeitz MoCAA. In 2019, he was suspended from his role at the museum following claims of misconduct. Coetzee resigned and took his employers to court; Kouoh was subsequently appointed.