Chanel has announced the public opening of Espace Gabrielle Chanel, mainland China’s first public library dedicated to contemporary art, at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art (PSA).
The 18,000-square-foot library was designed by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto and is located on the third floor of the museum. It holds more than 50,000 books and audiobooks, with over 10,000 accessible to the public as of Tuesday. The library encompasses an upgraded exhibition hall and a terrace looking out onto the Huangpu River.
The French luxury fashion house’s partnership with PSA is the latest phase of the Next Cultural Producer program, the first project by the Chanel Culture Fund in Asia. Launched at PSA in 2021, the program strives to “foster new ideas and emerging practices in contemporary Chinese craft, architecture, and theater,” a Chanel representative told ARTnews.
Chanel Culture Fund, initiated in 2021, “champions artists and cultural institutions that push boundaries, inspire experimentation, and expand public imagination” through patronage, the rep said. The fund is currently involved in 50 projects across 15 countries, including at London’s National Portrait Gallery. Spearheading the initiative is Yana Peel, Chanel’s president for arts, culture, and heritage.
“Espace Gabrielle Chanel symbolizes Chanel’s extended commitment to accelerating the ideas that advance culture,” Peel told ARTnews. “Our deepened relationship with PSA is testament to the fact that we’re not just thinking about the next quarter in our arts patronage, we’re looking to the next generation. The library embodies what is at the core of Chanel Culture Fund’s ideology; this idea of cross-cultural exchange, of honoring heritage, housing the archives of a nation, and also showcasing the best of what’s coming in the avant-garde.”
Espace Gabrielle Chanel will host the Archive of Chinese Contemporary Art, dedicated to preserving and contextualizing contemporary art practices in mainland China, and includes a 300-seat public theater. Peel said it will “connect the local community with a wider range of public programming across the arts.”
“Local engagement is essential,” she said, pointing to partnerships with M+ in Hon Kong, the Taipei Performing Arts Center, and the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul. “Over these past four years, the Next Cultural Producer program has really had us listening to PSA’s director, Gong Yan, and the curators on the ground. Ultimately, Espace Gabrielle Chanel is for the community. “Chanel Culture Fund has launched projects in the region that have become very successful at M+ in Hong Kong, the Taipei Performing Arts Center, and at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art, so to have another is exciting. … It’s a public museum for the people, where the idea of art for all is really championed.”
Gong Yan told ARTnews that “Espace Gabrielle Chanel stands as a tribute to cultural pioneers and a stage upon which the narrative of new life, new culture, and new art continues to unfold.”
PSA, housed in a former power station and opened in 2012, is the first state-run museum dedicated to contemporary art in mainland China. It is also home to the Shanghai Biennale. “The transformation of this historic riverside landmark, from powering the city’s first lights to powering its cultural imagination reflects our shared commitment to nurturing creativity and new ideas,” Renaud Bailly, Chanel’s president of North Asia, said in a statement.
When asked what Coco Chanel, the fashion house’s late founder, would have thought of Espace Gabrielle Chanel, Peel said, “She was an avid reader, and I think she would have loved to have been with us here at the opening in Shanghai. We know she had a deep appreciation for Chinese landscape ecology and architecture from the images of the Weet Lake in Hangzhou on the Coromandel screen in her apartment (at Rue Cambon).”
