CHANEL Culture Fund
Spotlighting interviews with each partner, the film highlights the Fund’s newly-launched global programme of unique, tailored initiatives to foster innovation and creative exchange across the visual and performing arts.
In the spirit of Gabrielle Chanel’s ground-breaking role as a patron and convener of the avant-garde of her day, the Fund reaffirms Chanel’s dedication to the freedom of creation and human potential.
Expanding upon the House’s rich history of cultural patronage, the Chanel Culture Fund is reinvigorating this support by creating the conditions for contemporary creators to dare, at a time when the arts provide a vital source of inspiration and new perspectives on the way we view the world.
The CHANEL Culture Fund partnerships include:
The National Portrait Gallery “Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture,” (London): The appointment of a team, led by ‘Chanel Curator for the Collection’, Flavia Frigeri, to research and enhance the representation of women in the Collection and on display in the Gallery when the NPG re-opens in 2023, following a major transformation project.
"The partnership with the CHANEL Culture Fund enables us to reconsider the place of women in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Women have always contributed to society, but very often they’ve been kept on the margins. With the support of the CHANEL Culture Fund, we are bringing women back to the centre by researching those women who are already in the collection and finding ways of bringing their achievements to a greater audience. But we’re also working with contemporary artists and photographers, where really, it’s about how the past and the present can inform our future."
Dr. Flavia Frigeri, CHANEL Curator for the Collection
The Underground Museum (Los Angeles): The Noah Davis Prize, three new fellowships awarded to curators innovating in their field and broadening cultural audiences.
"The Underground Museum is not only a place to show art, but it’s also an incubator for thinkers in the neighborhood, an intersection of cultures and race and ideas, a place where people can gather. Art, culture, wellness are not luxuries. Everyone is entitled to beauty.
The UM is excited to partner with the CHANEL Culture Fund for the Noah Davis Prize, which gives us an opportunity to honor Noah and to celebrate curators. Curators shine light on another person. With this award, we are given the opportunity to shine light on somebody else, to be a lighthouse, and to hopefully lead the way for change in the art world."
Karon Davis, Co-Founder and Artist
The Centre Pompidou (Paris): A multi-year programming initiative focused on collaborative explorations by designers, artists and scientists to create new ecologies for sustainable cities and communities.
"Imagining the world of tomorrow means working closely with those looking into ecological solutions. The CHANEL Culture Fund approached the Centre Pompidou to collaborate on supporting emerging creativity and research into ecology and urbanism. In giving visibility to this work, the CHANEL Culture Fund will stimulate it, and help young artists, designers and architects to find partners in ecological art and design. This aid to creativity is absolutely crucial to allow these creators to move forward with their research."
Frédéric Migayrou, Deputy director, Centre Pompidou – National Museum of Modern Art – CCI
GES-2 (Moscow): A three-year annual mentorship programme and residency for game-changing Russian women artists working at the intersection of theatre, music, dance and film, to coincide with the opening in 2021 of the former power station-turned new urban space for contemporary culture in central Moscow, designed by Renzo Piano and RPBW (Renzo Piano Building Workshop).
"GES-2 is a kind of utopia. It’s a new public space, privately funded, where people can get together for imagining tomorrow’s world. Fashion and art are always contemporary. They express the life of their time and reflect upon their societies. Gabrielle Chanel made a bond with Russian culture over 100 years ago. We are excited about this partnership with the CHANEL Culture Fund, which allows us to launch a long-term, joint program for emerging Russian female artists that will promote gender equity in the Russian art scene and lay out the foundation for their success on the global stage."
Teresa Mavica, General Director of V–А–С Foundation
Power Station of Art (Shanghai): The New Culture Producers Programme, to showcase new ideas and emerging movements in craft and architecture in Mainland China. For the next two years, the programme will launch an open call for makers in any creative discipline to propose a group exhibition, spotlighting the most compelling new creative forces, that results in an accessible and illuminating experience for the public.
"We all know that traditional museums no longer satisfy the younger generation’s imagination or expectation for the future. This partnership with the CHANEL Culture fund gives PSA the opportunity to reach out to young Chinese artists and audiences and to act as a catalyst that sparks inspiration. It allows us to plant a seed for tomorrow."
Gong Yan, Director, Power Station of Art, Shanghai
Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts & Culture at Chanel: “From the outset we sought to develop the CHANEL Culture Fund with a truly global scope, reflecting our commitment to the diversity of art forms and artists worldwide. The Culture Fund represents our House belief in the central importance of supporting individual creativity and nurturing human potential to drive innovation.
Ever more so over the past year, we have seen how the arts can provide much-needed sources of inspiration and refreshing perspectives on how we view the world. We look to artists and cultural leaders to envision the future, through knowledge exchange and long-term partnership.
As a House we have always championed the vitality of the arts, and we continue that tradition with the initiation of this Fund, with a focus on cultural innovators around the world who are mapping out what’s next and new."
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