Europe’s Most Innovative Culture Award Goes to the AVL Cultural Foundation

On the occasion of the 13th European Cultural Brand Awards, the AVL Cultural Foundation was honored as "European Culture Investor of the Year 2018" in the presence of 500 guests from business, culture, politics and the media. Michael Ksela, Managing Director of the AVL Cultural Foundation, was presented with the prize on the Night of Cultural Brands. “The AVL Cultural Foundation embraces projects that bring together arts and science to explore and foster human creativity and innovation. I would like to express my gratitude to the List family, in particular to Kathryn List, the main driving force behind AVL’s cultural commitment.”

In addition to its key area art & science, the AVL Cultural Foundation supports a broad variety of visual arts, new media art, digital art, sound art, music, dance theater and interdisciplinary projects. It focuses particularly on promoting young talent. Its latest project, the heterodyne musical instrument "The Irvine 7," in which sensitive gallium phosphate crystals (developed by AVL) are the sound source, reflects the AVL Cultural Foundation’s high level of creativity and innovative power. It took three years for Andy Cavatorta, a New York-based artist and inventor, and an interdisciplinary team of artists, to develop a musical instrument that offers musicians and composers an open laboratory for musical expression.

Bridging the gap between science and art, the AVL Cultural Foundation was launched by AVL CEO Helmut List and Kathryn List in the autumn of 2007 to implement and support art and culture projects. One of the motives behind it was to create interfaces between the creative work of artists and that of engineers.

The European Cultural Brand Award is the most innovative cultural award in Europe and made possible by more than 53 industry partners. 99 submissions from Albania, Portugal, Italy, France, Bulgaria, Malta, Greece, Luxembourg and the German-speaking countries were examined by a panel of 39 judges in a multi-stage selection procedure. Apart from the AVL Cultural Foundation, the nominees for the “European Cultural Investor of the Year 2018 Award” included such renowned companies as Erste Group Bank AG and BMW Group.