Chanel is teaming up with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation on a new curatorial fellowship that will move between New York and Venice, tying one of the art world’s biggest institutions more closely to one of its busiest international stages—and to a growing network of cultural initiatives backed by the fashion house. The announcement will come at the very start of the Venice Biennale.
Launching in fall 2026, the Chanel Culture Fund Fellowship will be a one-year program is for MA- and PhD-level scholars focused on collection studies and curatorial research. Each fellow will begin at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York before continuing at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, working across both museums’ archives and exhibitions.
For Chanel, the fellowship is less a one-off than part of a broader strategy. “What we’re trying to do is build an ecosystem of support—of infrastructure, of scholarship, of long-term investment in human intelligence,” said Yana Peel, the company’s president of arts, culture, and heritage. “Culture is made by artists, of course, but not by artists alone. It’s also the curators, the researchers, the institutions that make that cultural life possible.”
That emphasis on people rather than just programming runs through the structure of the fellowship itself. It is designed as a transatlantic complement to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s long-running International Fellowship, which immerses recent graduates in the daily life of the museum and has produced a notable list of alumni, including Nicholas Cullinan, Thomas Campbell, and Nathan Clements-Gillespie. One of those alumni, Flavia Frigeri, now serves as Chanel Curator for the Collection at London’s National Portrait Gallery.
The Guggenheim New York. Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Photograph by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. All Rights Reserved.
The new program operates at a more advanced level, targeting scholars already pursuing postgraduate research, while linking the Guggenheim’s New York and Venice venues into a single curatorial track. Each fellow will receive a stipend and travel support as part of the yearlong placement.
For Peel, Venice is not just a backdrop but a testing ground. “There’s this incredible concentration of people and ideas during the Biennale, but what happens after everyone leaves?” she said. “We were interested in leaving something behind—something that continues, that invests in the city as a place of scholarship and exchange, not just a moment every two years.”
The partnership also draws a quieter historical line between Gabrielle Chanel and Peggy Guggenheim—contemporaries who never met but shared a commitment to supporting artists working at the edge of their time. Both operated outside traditional structures, backing experimental work and building networks that outlasted them. The fellowship, in that sense, reads as a continuation of that ethos, translated into institutional form.
For the Guggenheim, it is also a way to extend its own mission. “This unique fellowship program will offer emerging curators opportunities to pursue original research, make new discoveries, and contribute fresh insights at the Guggenheim New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice,” director Mariët Westermann said. “It’s designed to benefit both art history and our visitors.”
