Feature: Fashion Meets Art with Bernard Arnault

Prada works with established art guide GermanoCelant, who said that the Prada foundation “was created intentionally undefined and open to any form of alteration, collaboration or dialogue. It is like a multi-directional map that corresponds to a globalized vision of culture in which there is neither center nor leadership, just progress in a boundless and boundary-less landscape.”

However, Prada’s artistic interests stretch farther than that of Arnault and Pinault, supporting exhibitions, architecture, cinema and philosophy. Fondazione Prada’s cultural and artistic efforts are international, with museum locations in Milan and Venice, and events hosted in New York, London, Tokyo and Seoul. Rem Koolhaas is at the helm of Prada’s most recent endeavor, a new mega museum in Milan set to open in 2012.

Arnault, Pinault and Prada are guiding culture through fashion and art. Their exhibition spaces, supported by bottomless pockets, reveal unbounded visions and legacies in progress. For these fashion business leaders, art is both an asset and a lasting investment. These are long-term tastemakers who are not just supporting contemporary art, but making history by decreasing the separation between fashion and art and uniting them in a marriage with luxury. Fashion is what is worn, art is what is not touched, but luxury is what is regarded with esteem and what is cared for. Arnault, Pinault and Prada seem to understand this in the fullest.