Chanel Launches New Cultural Fund with Diversity Initiatives Across the Globe

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Gabrielle Chanel’s friendships with artists Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, and Luchino Visconti made her an enthusiast and patron of the arts. She regularly met with her artist friends at her home or with society at an opera show. Her interactions with the avant-garde inspired the principles of design in her own clothing from free moving jersey to the purity of the little black dress. Chanel collaborated artistically by creating costumes for Cocteau’s plays and designing costumes for Visconti’s films. At the heart of the cultural revolution in the 20th century, Chanel acted as the observer and played an instrumental role as a patron, her passion of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and also Stravinsky, she took in and financed the revival of his Rite of Spring in 1920 after having bought the score – both benefited discreetly from her support and generosity. For a forward-thinking and free-thinking woman, the arts to Chanel was her family.

The dedication of Chanel as a patron in the arts continues to this day as the French fashion house’s role in cultural patronage, such projects include restoring the Lion of Saint Mark in Venice in 2015 and the Opening Gala of the Opéra national de Paris dance season since 2018. 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. On July 20, Chanel Arts & Culture is releasing a new short film on its global Chanel Culture Fund, showcasing its five partners including The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Underground Museum in Los Angeles, Centre Pompidou in Paris, GES-2 in Moscow, and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. The film highlights the fund’s newly-launched global program of unique, tailored initiatives to support cultural innovators in advancing new ideas, greater representation and collaboration across different art forms.

The fund reaffirms Chanel’s dedication to the freedom of creation and human potential in a global programme of unique, tailored initiatives to foster innovation and creative exchange across the visual and performing arts to advance new perspectives and representation across the world. The institutions selected are expanding the narrative of Chanel’s patronage such as The National Portrait Gallery in London focusing on an exhibition “Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture.” The appointment of a team, led by ‘Chanel Curator for the Collection’, Dr. 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,” said Dr. Frigeri, Chanel Curator for the Collection.

The Noah Davis Prize announced three new fellowships awarded to curators innovating in their field and broadening cultural audiences at The Underground Museum in Los Angeles. “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 will focus on a multi-year programming initiative focused on collaborative explorations by designers, artists and scientists to create new ecologies for sustainable cities and communities. In Shanghai, Power Station of Art developed 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 is an open call for makers in any creative discipline to propose a group exhibition for the public. At the GES-2, 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).

“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,” said Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts & Culture at Chanel.

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