Cameroonian-Swiss museum director Koyo Kouoh has been named curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale, making her the first African woman to organize the event.

The 57-year-old, who grew up in Cameroon and Switzerland, has been executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town since 2019.

She described the famous Venice festival as “the center of gravity for art for over a century” and said the art world converges “every two years on this legendary site to take the pulse of the spirit of the times.” She continued: “It is a once-in-a-lifetime honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of her luminary predecessors in the role of artistic director and to compose an exhibition that I hope will carry meaning for the world in which we currently live in. – and above all, for the world we want to create. Artists are visionaries and social scientists who allow us to think and project in a way reserved only for this sector of work.

Kouh was recommended by the president of La Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco. Buttafuoco, the former leader of the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement party, is considered an ideological ally of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Earlier this year, Meloni’s right-wing government appointed ten new leaders of the country’s main museums, with local candidates favored over people from outside Italy.

Many expected the decision of the curator of the 61st edition of the Biennale to continue this nationalist trend, but this is not the first time that Buttafuoco has surprised observers. In 2015, he converted to Islam, which according to Tutorled Meloni to use his veto to block his candidacy for governor of Sicily.

About Kouoh’s appointment, Buttafuoco said it was “the recognition of a broad horizon of vision at the dawn of a day rich in new words and perspectives.” Her perspective as a curator, researcher and influential public figure meets the finest, youngest and most disruptive minds. With it here in Venice, the Biennale confirms what it has offered the world for more than a century: to be the house of the future.

Previous exhibitions curated by Kouoh include Body Talk: feminism, sexuality and the body in the works of six African artistspresented for the first time at Wiels in Brussels in 2015. She was curator Always (the) Barbariansat the Biennial of Ireland in Limerick in 2016 and is the author of When we are seen: a century of black figuration in paintingwhich accompanied the eponymous show opening at Zeitz MOCAA in November 2022.