Montblanc, the German luxury brand best known for its pens and watches, has appointed the independent curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath as the co-chairmen of its cultural foundation. At the celebration of the foundation's 25th anniversary on 26 April in Venice, the company's chief executive Jérôme Lambert announced that the Lebanese-German double act will bring "new energy" to Montblanc's corporate art collection during their three-year term.
The curatorial appointment burnishes the art world credentials of a company that has kept a relatively low profile compared to other luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton or Prada, whose founders' personal collections and deep pockets have launched spectacular private museums.
The co-founders of the Munich- and New York-based organisation Art Reoriented, Bardaouil and Fellrath have staged exhibitions including Mona Hatoum: Turbulence at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha (2014), Songs of Loss and Songs of Love at the Gwangju Museum of Art (2014) and Letter to a Refusing Pilot, Akram Zaatari's solo presentation at the Lebanese pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennale.
Bardaouil and Fellrath will expand the collection of contemporary art commissions at Montblanc's Hamburg headquarters, which began in 2002 and includes works—all featuring the Montblanc star logo—by around 170 artists. Many of them were "on the cusp" then and have since become established names, such as Thomas Demand, Liam Gillick and Gary Hume, Bardaouil says. "Twenty years ago people weren't thinking about acquiring video for corporate collections. It would be great to broaden the scope of the media represented in the collection—video, performance, installation," he says.
Meanwhile, the Montblanc Cultural Foundation's main initiative, the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Awards, has quietly distributed almost €4m in grants to more than 230 recipients since 1992. The aim was to "support the ecosystem of art" by recognising the individuals who often act behind the scenes, Lambert says. Past winners include the Prince of Wales for the UK, architect Renzo Piano for Italy and the artist Yoko Ono for Japan.
Among the 16 recipients of €15,000 awards this year are the Shanghai-based Chinese artist Xu Zhen; Claudia Hakim, the founder of the NC-Arte space in Bogotá and new director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá; the Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson, who is building a museum in Moscow for his V-A-C Foundation, and Soumaya Slim, the daughter of the Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim who is vice-president of the family's Museo Soumaya in Mexico City.