Love jewelry? Then, you’ll love the exhibition Jewelry: The Body Transformed at The MET. On display are more than 230 objects drawn almost exclusively from The Met collection.
The exhibition traverses time and place, exploring everything from nose ornaments from the ancient Andes to lustrous Parisian pearls and and ivory cuff for a Benin king. It includes a vast array of ways humans have embellished their bodies throughout time from head and hair down to ankles and feet.
Jewelry: The Body Transformed is divided into five thematic areas of exhibition: The Divine Body; The Regal Body; The Transcendent Body; The Alluring Body; and The Resplendent Body.
Many of the ornaments on view in The Divine Body were ornaments buried with their wearers, seen as essential adornment for the next world. These burial places were found to look like underground stage sets. “The ensemble for a wife of Tutmose III stands among the most extravagant known examples of these sets of funerary-complex jewelry; her gold ornaments, made about 1450 B.C., include magnificent toe and finger covers designed to keep her body fully intact into the next realm.”
The Regal Body displays all that distinguishes the monarch from those of the royal retinue ~ “It should never be hard to spot the king.” The groupings in this section explore a few of the myriad ways jewelry has been used throughout history to assert rank and status.
The Transcendent Body is all about facilitating transcendent communication ~ whether by conjuring spirits, appeasing gods, or invoking ancestors. Jewelry on a spiritual level.
The Alluring Body ~ “Allure is…something that exists. It’s something around you, like a perfume or like a scent. It’s like memory…it pervades,” wrote Diana Vreeland, legendary fashion arbiter and longtime Vogue editor.
Eye-catching is an understatement for the pieces found in The Resplendent Body section. Here, the exhibition explores the spectacle of jewelry, the value of materials, the quality of design, the virtuosity of craftsmanship ~ these objects excite the desire to be look at ~ to flaunt and display.
Go inside The Met’s lavish new exhibit, Jewelry: The Body Transformed in an interview of exhibition curator Melanie Holcomb by The Daily Front Row ~ Here.
And a behind the scenes look at the exhibition from Galerie Magazine ~ Here.
Jewelry: The Body Transformed will be on view to February 24, 2019 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NYC.