The sudden death of the Cameroon-born curator Koyo Kouoh, at the age of 57 and at the height of her career, has shaken the art world. Her passing has left a void in the African arts scene, one which extends far beyond the continent. Born in 1967 in Douala, she spent her teenage and early adult years in Zurich, Switzerland before returning to the continent and settling in Senegal. She lived in Cape Town, South Africa from 2019. There she was executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz MOCAA museum. It holds the continent’s largest collection of contemporary art. At the time of her death, she was due to become the first African woman to lead the prestigious Venice Biennale, dubbed the “Olympics of art world”. She described her practice, as a creative manager of art spaces and exhibitions, as being deeply rooted in:
A pan-African, feminist, ancestral, activist perspective, but also one that is generous, inclusive and welcoming.
Kouoh was unapologetic about her commitment to promoting Africa and Africanness on the global stage. Her decorated career included serving in global roles as curatorial advisor for leadingexhibitions and art events. As a researcher of modern and contemporary arts of Africa, I first met Kouoh in 2015 when she facilitated a curatorial workshop I attended. I would work with her at Zeitz MOCAA, specifically helping research her landmark show, When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting. Beyond these achievements, Kouoh mentored countless artists and art organisers, especially women. She leaves a legacy of building sustainable art institutions, critical curating with care, uplifting artists and cultural workers, and educating through art.
My motto has always been, You have to set up your own house and build your own home as opposed to trying to get into someone else’s castle.
One of the lasting legacies Kouoh left is teaching how to build African arts institutions, which help give creatives the chance to be seen and heard, and to make independent decisions free of the demands of funders. The RAW Material Company that she established in Dakar stands as testimony of that. Through the artist residency and exhibition space, she was able to bring many independent and emerging artists, curators and gallerists to Senegal. There she published books on art from the continent, helping nurture and shift the Africa art ecosystem as it began to play an increasingly visible role in global art markets. Her role in reviving the unstable ship that was the Zeitz MOCAA at the time she took over and steering it to becoming one of Africa’s leading cultural institutions and a global competitor says a lot about her vision. As she said:
I’m a fixer, I like to take complicated institutions and make them sustainable.
Education
The exhibitions she led were thoroughly researched and tended to generate critical discourse and public dialogue. When We See Us, for example, comes with an education programme that includes a webinar series. Each exhibition of the show as it tours globally comes with a symposium and a publication with contributions from critical thinkers in the art industry. Even more impressive is how she managed to bring together people from different sectors, including respected academics, cultural workers and captains of industry. We cannot talk about Kouoh’s contributions to art education without mentioning the Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape Museum Fellowship Programme, geared to grow “curatorial practice as well as advance scholarship on contemporary art discourse from the continent”. In my tenure, I observed that the museum’s Centre for Art Education and its outreach programme were closest to her heart.
Celebrating African artists
At Zeitz MOCAA, Kouoh was more drawn to research-based solo exhibitions or select surveys which offered in-depth insights into “individual practices, with retrospectives and monographs”. In her time at the museum it shone a spotlight on African artists like Senzeni Marasela, Johannes Phokela, Tracey Rose, Mary Evans, Otobong Nkanga and others. Through the museum’s ongoing Atelier programme, a studio residency which is open and experimental in nature, audiences gain insights into an artist’s practice, process, thinking and intentions. So far, artists like Thania Petersen, Igshaan Adams, Unathi Mkonto and Berni Searle have shared these processes, which normally remain invisible to those who only see the final work. She did all this in just over five years in Cape Town.
Uplifting generations
Kouoh believed in people’s potential and saw infinite possibilities in each one of us. This can be seen through the many peers and young talents she mentored and provided space to flourish. The young team of mostly Black female curators she has left in place at Zeitz MOCAA is proof of that. She cared about the welfare of the people around her. Of the need to elevate women, she stated:
The importance, or rather the urgency, of focusing on women’s voices cannot be highlighted enough.
Curator of the Venice Biennale 2026
Recently appointed as the next Venice Biennale’s artistic director, Kouoh was due to present the exhibition’s title and theme in Venice on 20 May. Those who have known her practice, as well as her obsessions and values, keenly anticipated the day, knowing African voices would take centre stage. I hope her team will be allowed to execute her ideas to the end.
Legacy
Kouoh belonged to a pioneering generation of African curators who worked hard for the recognition of African voices and creativity on the global stage. Although that recognition started to be earned in the 1990s, she realised a lot more still needed to be done, which is why she never stopped working, even at the most difficult of times. She shared her vision of building strong independent institutions, encouraging others to do the same. She led in documenting and critically engaging artistic processes, and in producing African knowledge. May her legacy and her spirit live on. As she said:
I do believe in life after death, because I come from an ancestral black education where we believe in parallel lives and realities.
What a bear attack in a remote valley in Nepal tells us about the problem of aging rural communities
A 71-year-old in Nepal’s Nubri valley survives repeated bear attacks as youth outmigration and rapid population aging leave fewer people to protect crops and homes—pushing bears closer to villages and raising urgent questions about safety, conservation rules, and rural resilience.
Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.
It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”
Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”
Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.
Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.
In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.
Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.
It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.
Scarcity of ‘scarebears’
Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.
Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.
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These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.
A not-so-big surprise, anymore
Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.
Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.
So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.
He described what happened next:
“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”
Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.
Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.
And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.A woman weeding freshly planted corn across the valley from Trok, Nubri. Geoff Childs, CC BY-SA
So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?
Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.
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Learning to grin and bear it?
Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.
Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.
“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”
It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.
Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.
The Building That Proved Los Angeles Could Go Vertical
Los Angeles once banned skyscrapers, yet City Hall broke the height limit and proved high-rise buildings could be engineered safely in an earthquake zone.
How City Hall Quietly Undermined LA’s Own Height Limits
The Knowledge Series | STM Daily News
For more than half a century, Los Angeles enforced one of the strictest building height limits in the United States. Beginning in 1905, most buildings were capped at 150 feet, shaping a city that grew outward rather than upward.
The goal was clear: avoid the congestion, shadows, and fire dangers associated with dense Eastern cities. Los Angeles sold itself as open, sunlit, and horizontal — a place where growth spread across land, not into the sky.
And yet, in 1928, Los Angeles City Hall rose to 454 feet, towering over the city like a contradiction in concrete.
It wasn’t built to spark a commercial skyscraper boom. But it ended up proving that Los Angeles could safely build one.
A Rule Designed to Prevent a Manhattan-Style City
The original height restriction was rooted in early 20th-century fears:
Limited firefighting capabilities
Concerns over blocked sunlight and airflow
Anxiety about congestion and overcrowding
A strong desire not to resemble New York or Chicago
Los Angeles wanted prosperity — just not vertical density.
The height cap reinforced a development model where:
Office districts stayed low-rise
Growth moved outward
Automobiles became essential
Downtown never consolidated into a dense core
This philosophy held firm even as other American cities raced upward.
How Los Angeles City Hall Proved Skyscrapers Could Be Built Safely
Why City Hall Was Never Meant to Change the Rules
City Hall was intentionally exempt from the height limit because the law applied primarily to private commercial buildings, not civic monuments.
But city leaders were explicit about one thing: City Hall was not a precedent.
It was designed to:
Serve as a symbolic seat of government
Stand alone as a civic landmark
Represent stability, authority, and modern governance
Avoid competing with private office buildings
In effect, Los Angeles wanted a skyline icon — without a skyline.
Innovation Hidden in Plain Sight
What made City Hall truly significant wasn’t just its height — it was how it was built.
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At a time when seismic science was still developing, City Hall incorporated advanced structural ideas for its era:
A steel-frame skeleton designed for flexibility
Reinforced concrete shear walls for lateral strength
A tapered tower to reduce wind and seismic stress
Thick structural cores that distributed force instead of resisting it rigidly
These choices weren’t about aesthetics — they were about survival.
The Earthquake That Changed the Conversation
In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California, causing widespread damage and reshaping building codes statewide.
Los Angeles City Hall survived with minimal structural damage.
This moment quietly reshaped the debate:
A tall building had endured a major earthquake
Structural engineering had proven effective
Height alone was no longer the enemy — poor design was
City Hall didn’t just survive — it validated a new approach to vertical construction in seismic regions.
Proof Without Permission
Despite this success, Los Angeles did not rush to repeal its height limits.
Cultural resistance to density remained strong, and developers continued to build outward rather than upward. But the technical argument had already been settled.
City Hall stood as living proof that:
High-rise buildings could be engineered safely in Los Angeles
Earthquakes were a challenge, not a barrier
Fire, structural, and seismic risks could be managed
The height restriction was no longer about safety — it was about philosophy.
The Ironic Legacy
When Los Angeles finally lifted its height limit in 1957, the city did not suddenly erupt into skyscrapers. The habit of building outward was already deeply entrenched.
The result:
A skyline that arrived decades late
Uneven density across the region
Multiple business centers instead of one core
Housing and transit challenges baked into the city’s growth pattern
City Hall never triggered a skyscraper boom — but it quietly made one possible.
Why This Still Matters
Today, Los Angeles continues to wrestle with:
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Housing shortages
Transit-oriented development debates
Height and zoning battles near rail corridors
Resistance to density in a growing city
These debates didn’t begin recently.
They trace back to a single contradiction: a city that banned tall buildings — while proving they could be built safely all along.
Los Angeles City Hall wasn’t just a monument. It was a test case — and it passed.
When TV Talks About Gentrification and Shopping Local — and Where It Gets It Right (and Wrong)
A closer look at how the TV show The Neighborhood tackles gentrification and shopping local—and where the reality of online sales and small business survival is more complex.
In our continuing look at how entertainment—television, movies, and streaming shows—grapples with real-world issues, this time we turn our attention to gentrification and the often-repeated call to “shop local.” Once again, we examine how popular culture frames these conversations, this time through the CBS sitcom The Neighborhood and the episode “Welcome Back to What Used to Be the Neighborhood.”
A Familiar Story: When the Neighborhood Changes
In the episode, Calvin’s favorite longtime restaurant closes its doors and is replaced by a flashy new pet spa. To Calvin, the change symbolizes something much bigger than a single business closing—it represents the slow erosion of the neighborhood he knows and loves. In response, he launches a campaign urging friends and neighbors to buy local in order to protect small businesses from disappearing.
Emotionally, the episode hits home. Many communities across the country have watched beloved neighborhood institutions vanish, replaced by businesses that feel disconnected from the area’s history and culture. In that sense, The Neighborhood gets something very right: gentrification often shows up one storefront at a time.
Where Television Simplifies a Complicated Reality
But, as is often the case with television, the episode also simplifies a much more complex economic reality.
The show frames “shopping local” as a direct alternative to shopping online, subtly suggesting that online platforms are inherently harmful to small businesses. In real life, however, the line between “local” and “online” is no longer so clear.
Many local and small businesses now survive precisely because they sell online—through their own websites, through Amazon, or through other platforms that support independent sellers. For some, online sales are not a threat to local commerce; they are a lifeline.
Why Brick-and-Mortar Isn’t Always Sustainable
Rising costs are a major factor driving these changes. Commercial leases, insurance premiums, utilities, staffing costs, and local fees have all increased dramatically in many cities. For small business owners, keeping a physical storefront open can become financially impossible—even when customer support remains strong.
As a result, some businesses choose to close their brick-and-mortar locations while continuing to operate online. Others scale back to pop-ups, shared spaces, or hybrid models. These businesses may no longer have a traditional storefront, but they are still local—employing local workers, paying local taxes, and serving their communities in new ways.
The Real Issue Behind “Shop Local”
Where The Neighborhood succeeds is in capturing the emotional truth of gentrification: the sense of loss, displacement, and cultural change that comes with rising rents and shifting demographics.
Where it misses the mark is in suggesting that consumer choices alone—simply avoiding online shopping—can solve the problem.
The real challenges facing local and small businesses go far beyond individual buying habits. They include zoning policies, commercial rent practices, corporate consolidation, and economic systems that increasingly favor scale over community presence.
A Conversation Worth Having—Even If TV Can’t Finish It
The Neighborhood deserves credit for bringing these issues into mainstream conversation. It sparks discussion, even if it wraps a complicated topic in a sitcom-friendly moral lesson.
The reality is messier. Supporting local businesses today often means rethinking what “local” looks like in a digital economy—and recognizing that survival sometimes requires adaptation, not nostalgia.
At STM Daily News, our Local and Small Business coverage continues to explore these real-world dynamics beyond the TV screen, highlighting the challenges, innovations, and resilience of the businesses that keep communities alive—whether their doors are on Main Street or their storefronts live online.
📍 Read more Local and Small Business coverage at:STM Daily News
Rod: A creative force, blending words, images, and flavors. Blogger, writer, filmmaker, and photographer. Cooking enthusiast with a sci-fi vision. Passionate about his upcoming series and dedicated to TNC Network. Partnered with Rebecca Washington for a shared journey of love and art. View all posts
