Chanel and the Guggenheim Foundation Launch a Fellowship Linking New York and Venice
Chanel is deepening its cultural footprint with a new curatorial fellowship created with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Set to begin in fall 2026, the Chanel Culture Fund Fellowship will place postgraduate scholars at two of the Guggenheim’s most closely watched venues: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.
The one-year program is aimed at MA- and PhD-level researchers working in collection studies and curatorial research. Fellows will start in New York, then continue in Venice, moving through the archives and exhibitions of both institutions. A stipend and travel support are included.
The structure matters. Rather than funding a single project or a short residency, the fellowship is designed as a transatlantic track that connects scholarship to the day-to-day life of two museums. Chanel’s president of arts, culture, and heritage, Yana Peel, framed the initiative as part of a broader strategy to build what she called an ecosystem of support — infrastructure, scholarship, and long-term investment in human intelligence. In her view, culture depends not only on artists, but also on the curators, researchers, and institutions that sustain their work.
The program also extends the Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s long-running International Fellowship, which has introduced recent graduates to museum practice and produced alumni including Nicholas Cullinan, Thomas Campbell, Nathan Clements-Gillespie, and Flavia Frigeri, now Chanel Curator for the Collection at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The new fellowship operates at a more advanced level, targeting scholars already engaged in postgraduate research.
Venice is central to the concept. Peel said the city’s Biennale season concentrates people and ideas, but the real question is what remains once the crowds leave. The fellowship is intended to leave behind something more durable: a continuing investment in Venice as a place of scholarship and exchange.
There is also a historical resonance. Gabrielle Chanel and Peggy Guggenheim were contemporaries who never met, yet both supported artists working at the edge of their time and built networks that outlasted them. The new fellowship translates that shared ethos into institutional form.
For the Guggenheim, the partnership is also a way to extend its mission. Director Mariët Westermann said the program will give emerging curators opportunities to pursue original research, make new discoveries, and contribute fresh insights in New York and Venice. The result is a fellowship that treats curatorial labor not as background work, but as a vital part of how art history is made and experienced.
