Beauty of the Beast January 24–May 10, 2015 Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, The Netherlands A certified taxidermist demonstrated during opening night how to fasten a bird’s skin—with feathers attached—around a plastic mold. Beauty of the Beast, Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, the Netherlands, photo: Monika Auch Taxidermy—the process of skillfully conserving dead animals or pieces of animals—is a […]
Master Metalsmith: Myra Mimlitsch-Gray September 12–November 30, 2014 National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, Tennessee, USA The text running down the side of the exhibition title wall reads like a group crit word bank à la 90s graphic design star David Carson. Prefixes dis-, re-, and up- are followed by their corresponding suffixes. A clutch of
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A Symposium Review ThinkingJewellery 10—SchmuckDenken 10On Our Way to a Theory of JewelleryArt and good life – Art between leisure and social responsibilityOctober 18–19, 2014Trier University of Applied Sciences, Idar-Oberstein The unexpected German train strike during the weekend of the ThinkingJewellery 10 symposium could almost be interpreted as a response to this year’s theme of “art between leisure
Attendees fill the Washington State History Museum auditorium, photo: Lindsey Snell The SMG aims to assemble an annual event with diverse programming to support the metals community across the Northwest. The Protective Ornament curator and current Metalsmith editor, Suzanne Ramljak, was the welcome keynote to this year’s lecture series. Ramljak’s opening presentation, All Is Fair
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Lauren Kalman: Coveted Objects September 13–October 19, 2014 Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA In Lauren Kalman’s works there is little restraint, unless of course we are talking about actual physical restraining devices. The works on show in her new exhibition, Coveted Objects, continue in the artist’s tradition of making beautiful objects and well-composed
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Damian Skinner and Kevin Murray, Place and Adornment: A History of Contemporary Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand. Auckland: David Bateman Ltd, 2014. ISBN: 0824846877 After seven years of collaborative research, Place and Adornment: A History of Contemporary Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand is now published, written by Damian Skinner from Aotearoa New
Marzee Graduate Show 2014 August 17-October 19, 2014 Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, Netherlands Gallery opening, Marzee Graduate Show 2014, Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, Netherlands, photo: Michiel Heffels Every year, alongside the show, space is also given over to a small exhibition of work produced by the previous year’s prizewinners. The prize, a weeklong residency at Atelier Ravary
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The Rings of Saturn June 6–October 19, 2014 Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England Take any length of string, wire, or chain, link it together at one end, and you have a necklace. This simple construction can then be embellished with, theoretically, anything, as long as it can be attached in some way to the necklace
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The Gijs+Emmy Spectacle February 22–August 24, 2014 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Curated by Marjan Boot View of the original Stedelijk Museum (A.W. Weissman, 1895) and the new building designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects, from the museum’s website, photo: John Lewis Marshall Five years. In 2012, after a shutdown, renovation, and enlargement that lasted
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Unique by Design: Contemporary Jewelry in the Donna Schneier Collection May 13–August 31, 2014 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York A collection always bears its own narrative. This narrative is usually inspired by a folksy story about the first acquisition, a heralded inaugural object that serves as a kind of synecdoche that characterizes and sets
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Matthew Hart, GOLD: The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013 ISBN 978-1451650020 “What are you reading?” I nearly knocked over my coffee in surprise when the smoky voice of the waiter cut through my focus. At the dining counter, Gold, Matthew Hart’s newest 290-page work of nonfiction,
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Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER April 22–June 8, 2014 The Gallery of Art in Legnica, Legnica, Poland Before I embarked from Edinburgh, Scotland, via Berlin, for Legnica (pronounced Leg’nitsa), Poland, a university colleague quipped, “Break a Legnica.”[1] At the time it made me laugh. I don’t know if you are familiar with the expression, understand the
