Peel bounced back quickly after leaving London’s Serpentine Galleries
in 2019 (following what she claimed were ‘toxic, personal attacks’ concerning her husband’s investments). Chanel hired her a year later, and since then, as its inaugural head of arts and culture, she has committed the fashion brand to long-term support of curatorial positions at MCA Chicago; the Power Station of Art, Shanghai; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Fondation Beyeler (where Chanel will fund the Basel institution’s first ‘Botanical Curator’); as well as research initiatives at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, and the Pompidou, Paris. The biennial Next Prize, launched by Peel, comes around again next year, but presumably the 2024 winner, video artist Ho Tzu Nyen, is still spending the $100,000 he received. All this splashed cash doesn’t go unnoticed, and Peel is able to command big names to take part in the brand’s culture podcast and the inaugural edition of its Arts & Culture magazine, which featured Peel’s former colleague Hans Ulrich Obrist, Performa’s RoseLee Goldberg and photographer Roe Ethridge.

*Yana Peel was previously number 71 on the 2011 Power 100 list, and number 79 on the 2010 list, both with Candida Gertler