MACBA Director Elvira Dyangani Ose Steps Down
22Feb. 26, 2026
Elvira Dyangani Oseis leaving her role as director of theMuseu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona(MACBA) three months early. Dyangani Osein 2021 became the first woman and the first person of color to helm the institutionsince its 1987 founding. Her five-year contract was to have expired in July, but she will leave in April.
In January, Dyangani Ose was appointed artistic director of the Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennial, to open this fall and run into 2027. Spanish daily El País reports that she wrote to MACBA staff on February 23 informing them that she had told museum officials of the appointment and had let them know that she would not be assisting in the search for her successor. Dyangani Ose said that she petitioned to finish out her term at MACBA, balancing her duties there with those of the upcoming biennial, but that her request was denied.
Before arriving at MACBA, the Córdoba-born Ose spent three years as director and chief curator of London’s Showroom, which focuses on site-specific commissions by emerging artists. Previously, she was curator of international art at London’s Tate Modern, curator of contemporary art at Seville, Spain’s Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC), and senior curator at Creative Time in New York. In 2015 she curated the Eighth Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in Sweden, and in 2013 she served as the artistic director of the Third Rencontres Picha – Lubumbashi Biennial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.