Zeitz MOCAA Names Elvira Dyangani Ose as Next Artistic Director
Zeitz MOCAA — the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town — has named Elvira Dyangani Ose as its next Artistic Director Artnews.
Dyangani Ose currently serves as director of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, widely known as MACBA. She will step down from that post at the beginning of April, departing ahead of her five-year contract's original expiration in July Artforum. The early exit clears the way for her move to Cape Town.
Before Barcelona, Dyangani Ose was director and chief curator of The Showroom, a contemporary art space in London. Her curatorial career has bridged institutions across Europe and Africa, and she has been a recurring voice in international conversations about how museums collect, display and frame work from the African continent.
Zeitz MOCAA opened in 2017 inside a converted grain silo on Cape Town's Victoria & Alfred Waterfront. The building's dramatic atrium was carved from the old concrete structure, and the museum quickly became a focal point for contemporary African art — a field long underrepresented in major global institutions. Its collection includes work donated by the German businessman Jochen Zeitz, whose name the museum carries.
The Artistic Director role at Zeitz MOCAA sits at the intersection of curatorial vision and institutional leadership: shaping exhibitions, building relationships with artists and lenders, and guiding how the museum engages with audiences across the continent and beyond.
Dyangani Ose's appointment comes with a start date that has not yet been publicly specified. Her departure from MACBA, however, is fixed for early April, giving the Barcelona museum roughly two months to address the transition.
For Cape Town, the arrival of a director with experience running institutions in both London and Barcelona brings a track record of programming on an international stage. For Barcelona, the departure reopens a leadership question at a museum that has seen its own share of institutional turbulence in recent years.
Neither Zeitz MOCAA nor MACBA has yet named a replacement or further transitional detail beyond Dyangani Ose's April exit from the Spanish museum.
