Ursula Ilse-Neuman

Ursula Ilse-Neuman has established an international reputation as a leading expert on contemporary craft and design, specializing in art jewelry. She now divides her time between New York and Tel Aviv. Ms. Ilse-Neuman is Curator Emerita at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, where, as curator from 1992–2015, she organized more than 40 exhibitions in all media: Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography (2014), Light, Space, Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta (2012), Inspired Jewelry: Jewelry from the Museum of Arts and Design (2009), Glass in Contemporary Jewelry (2007), and Zero Karat: The Donna Schneier Collection (2006). Recent guest-curated exhibitions, with accompanying publications, include Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, at SCAD Museum of Art (2021); and Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (2017). Her current projects include Stirring Voices from an Ancient Land: Contemporary Jewelry from Israel, first published in Metalsmith magazine in 2019. It is being expanded as an exhibition.

She has been a juror for national and international exhibitions including Sonderschau Schmuck, Munich, Germany, and the International Jewelry Expo, Shanghai; and curator of the American contemporary jewelry section in the Abhushan exhibition, in New Delhi, India, sponsored by the World Craft Council. (Photo: Lawrence D. Neuman)