The Venice Biennale has for the first time appointed an African woman as the curator of its contemporary art festival. Swiss-Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh has been put in charge of the 61st edition of the Biennale Arte, which will take place in Venice from April to November 2026. Born in 1967 in Cameroon but educated through her teens and twenties in Zurich, Switzerland, Kouoh has since 2019 been executive director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa, which holds the continent’s largest collection of contemporary art. A self-described “fundamental pan-Africanist”, she was previously the founding artistic director of Raw Material Company, an art centre in Dakar, Senegal.