A Curator Died Suddenly. Could the Art World’s Most Important Event Be ...

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A Curator Died Suddenly. Could the Art World’s Most Important Event Be Saved?

Koyo Kouoh, who died of cancer at 57, was just months into her dream job overseeing the Venice Biennale’s centerpiece exhibition. But she left a plan that her assistants have tried to realize.

Koyo Kouoh in South Africa in 2023. Her husband said that curating the Venice Biennale’s centerpiece exhibition was Kouoh’s ultimate goal.

Credit...

Tsele Nthane for The New York Times

A Curator Died Suddenly. Could the Art World’s Most Important Event Be Saved?

Koyo Kouoh, who died of cancer at 57, was just months into her dream job overseeing the Venice Biennale’s centerpiece exhibition. But she left a plan that her assistants have tried to realize.

Koyo Kouoh in South Africa in 2023. Her husband said that curating the Venice Biennale’s centerpiece exhibition was Kouoh’s ultimate goal.

Credit...

Tsele Nthane for The New York Times

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By

Alex Marshall

April 29, 2026

When Koyo Kouoh arrived back at the airport last May in her hometown, Basel, Switzerland, she cried as she told her husband that she had some good news and some bad news.

Kouoh had gone to see a doctor during a work trip to Senegal because she was feeling weak, and had undergone an M.R.I. scan. Kouoh, a heavy smoker, said the good news was that she didn’t have lung cancer. But the bad news was no joke: She had liver cancer.

Within days

Kouoh was dead

, aged just 57 and only a few months into her dream job as the curator of the central exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the art world’s most important event.

Her show was set to open almost exactly a year later.

To some art world observers, it seemed unlikely that the Biennale’s organizers would continue Kouoh’s work. Overseeing the Biennale’s main show requires months of crisscrossing the world to meet artists, commission works and charm donors.

Yet on May 9, the exhibition will open under Kouoh’s name and with her chosen title, “In Minor Keys.” In the Biennale’s main exhibition halls, a vast presentation of works by

110 artists and collectives

is now coming together, with participants including

Wangechi Mutu

, the acclaimed Kenyan multimedia artist;

Alvaro Barrington

, the Venezuela-born painter; and the

American installation artist Nick Cave

.

Image

The Biennale’s central pavilion in 2024. Overseeing the Biennale’s main show requires months of crisscrossing the world to meet artists, commission works and charm donors.

Credit...

Matteo de Mayda for The New York Times

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