Installation view of the "Jewelry The Body Transformed" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Photo: Erik Bardin, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
VIDEO: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum’s Blockbuster Jewelry Exhibition
In this exclusive video, we talk to the curators behind “Jewelry: The Body Transformed”
What does Alexander McQueen have in common with an 18th Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh? A love of bling. The highly anticipated exhibition “Jewelry: The Body Transformed” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gathers an astonishing 230 objects and 8,000 pieces of jewelry spanning 2,600 B.C. to the present to examine the purpose and power of jewelry.
The ambitious undertaking, which Galerie was proud to sponsor, draws from all 17 museum departments and took six curators to organize. In this exclusive video, we talked to the lead curator and Medieval art specialist Melanie Holcomb; curator of Arts of the Ancient Americas, Joanne Pillsbury; curator of American Decorative Arts, Beth Carver Wees; and the co-owner of David Webb jewelry, Mark Emanuel, who sponsored the event’s opening night.
“The focus is not on makers or making but how jewelry makes us,” Holcomb says. “Jewelry is the oldest art form and it predates cave painting by tens of thousands of years.” Watch the video to uncover the fascinating and varied ways in which humans have adorned themselves throughout history.
Read the full story here.
Cover: Installation view of the "Jewelry The Body Transformed" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Photo: Erik Bardin, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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