Zeitz MOCAA Appoints Dyangani Ose as New Artistic Director Following Kouoh’s Passing

The museum’s other founder and chair, Jochen Zeitz, the German businessman and former Puma chief executive — for whom the museum is named — said in a statement that he felt that Dyangani Ose’s experience would build on the foundations laid in the museum’s first decade, as well as “expand the museum’s artistic ambition — across exhibitions, research, collections, public engagement and the way we work with artists and audiences.”

On Oct. 1, Dyangani Ose will step into the position formerly held by Kouoh, who arrived at Zeitz MOCAA in 2019. Beloved by her colleagues and staff, Kouoh is widely credited with stabilizing a troubled institution and building programs that sought to bridge deeply entrenched social and class divisions in Cape Town.

“The museum was in crisis when Koyo came on, subsequently compounded by the pandemic,” Storm Janse van Rensburg, who was then a senior curator at Zeitz MOCAA, said in a 2023 interview with The New York Times. “The urgency was to bring it back to life.” She is largely credited with doing so. (When Kouoh died in May 2025, she was also serving as curator and artistic director for the 2026 Venice Biennale.)

Dyangani Ose, born in Spain to a family of Equatorial Guinean descent, was appointed in January as the artistic director of the second edition of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, which will open Oct. 23. Prior to her role at MACBA in Barcelona, she directed London’s Showroom, a nonprofit gallery focused on social practice art.

Her curatorial portfolio includes exhibitions featuring Theaster Gates, Carrie Mae Weems, Zanele Muholi, Betye Saar, Bouchra Khalili, and Sudan-born painter Ibrahim El-Salahi. In 2006, while serving as curator at Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in the Canary Islands, she co-curated a survey of 14 emerging South African artists.

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