At the most recent edition of Art Genève, luxury watchmaker Piaget was everywhere: sponsoring the fair, exhibiting the archive of Andy Warhol’s collection of timepieces, hosting manufactory tours, launching prizes. This is familiar territory, of course. Brands often borrow the cultural capital of institutions who in return gain the resources to extend their reach, but with the world in a period of turmoil, the way the brand interacted with this edition of the fair felt different, more heartfelt and more connected to the artistic response to our troubled times.
Piaget tour 2026 Photo Hannah Hayes-Westall
Inside Piaget’s jewel-packed workshops, Piaget’s Head Gemologist Guilaume Chatru, a fascinating former herpetologist who first encountered stones through snake habitats, spoke about the importance of holding designs for years until the right stone for the design is found. Meanwhile, the fair’s anchor exhibitions included a hugely popular show of Australian Indigenous Aboriginal Women artists from the Foundation Opale collection at Musee Rath and a John M Armleder takeover at MAH Geneva, both of which, in very different but very poetic ways, pulled focus onto the idea of a socially embodied memory based in an arts-informed episteme.
Installation View Observatories Carte blanche with John M Armleder Photo: Hannah Hayes-Westall
The traditional compact between luxury and art, whereby brands buy prestige and institutions get funding, appears to be fragmenting prismatically in unexpected ways. As visitor content creation leads some institutions to create exhibitions less focused on knowledge sharing and more on participation, commercial entities with credible artistic roots are investing in maintaining artistic infrastructure and knowledge preservation. At the same time, thoughtfully led art institutions are increasingly questioning the gatekeeping structures that once gave them authority. This redistribution of cultural function was everywhere in Geneva, and everywhere, and as the world questions the value of the established cultural order, the questions it poses for the future of creative capital become more vital.
Install view, They. Contemporary Aboriginal artists at Musée Rath Photo Hannah Hayes-Westall
Piaget’s reputation as one of the more artistically adventurous watchmakers stems from a programme begun in the 1950s when the company directed its already accomplished craftsmen to engage with the unprecedented forms and materials of the arts by engaging with the art world as active participants. This creative eccentricity attracted commissions from Dalí, Warhol, Arman, Hans Erni, Alberto Rizzo, Alain Delon, Elizabeth Taylor, Duke Elington and more, not as paid endorsers, but as clients drawn to a house willing to attempt the technically improbable. In creating a dynamic where artistry and crafts form a solid commercial business, Piaget opened the floodgates for others to follow, and in recent years, the pipeline of emerging, lateral-thinking talent has become ever more sought after. In response, Piaget has established partnerships with HEAD Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design) and, since this year, Art Genève itself.
Piaget tour 2026 Photo Hannah Hayes-Westall
Furthering Yves Piaget’s vision of a world of creativity informed by art, in 2026, Piaget and Art Genève joined together to make a significant contribution to the development of the City of Geneva’s art collections through the launch of the Piaget Prix Solo Art Genève. Judges Kathrin Bentel, Director of Fri-Art, Fribourg; Céline Poulin, Director of Frac Ile-de- France; and Nicolas Trembley, Exhibition Curator and Curator of the Syz Collection, were charged with identifying the finest artist presented at the solo section of the exhibition. Each year, a work from the winning presentation will be acquired and entered the MAMCO Geneva collection and in 2026, the prize went to the gallery Maximillian William for the presentation of the work of Reginald Sylvester II. For his debut presentation in Switzerland, the American artist presented nine new paintings made on industrial rubber, transformed into evocative abstractions through washes of red pigment and layered surfaces.
Maximillian William presents Reginald Sylvester II. at Art Genève 2026
In building a city-wide environment that seeks to create the conditions for frequent interactions between art and craftsmanship, the fair and its institutional and commercial partners are stepping beyond the transactional nature of much art world sponsorship and creating something closer to a new model for commercial support.
MORE: piaget.com/ateliers-de-l-extraordinaire
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Hannah Hayes Westall is a writer and thinker who divides her time between the art world and working with businesses on strategic growth. She is co-publisher of Art of Conversation.