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Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM) has undertaken a series of important surveys of American contemporary jewelers over the past few years. These include Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard in 2010 and Knitted, Knotted, Twisted & Twined: The Jewelry of Mary Lee Hu in 2012. (You can read reviews of both exhibitions on the AJF website. The museum has also been a frequent American venue for national and international touring exhibitions of contemporary jewelry. I had the opportunity to speak with Stefano Catalani, Director of Curatorial Affairs/Artistic Director, in October 2011. We talked about his institution and the role of contemporary jewelry in the museum’s activities.

Damian Skinner: Your museum doesn’t have a contemporary jewelry collection, but you do a lot of work with jewelry.

Stefano Catalani: That is correct. We’re a non-collecting institution.

Has the museum ever had a collection?

Stefano Catalani: Yes. It was de-accessioned around 1998. Ultimately, most of the collection ended up at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington. An agreement between the two institutions grants us free access to the collection. We can borrow any object from their collection, whether or not it came from BAM. That’s been useful in the past six years.

The decision to part with the collection was made at the time when the organization was moving from an older venue to the current building. The space was designed by Steven Holl to host a Kunsthalle-type museum with always-changing exhibitions. Shedding the skin of a permanent collection made us able to seize the moment of the contemporary art world. We would like to collect some day, although honestly, in these times of economic downturn, we are happy not to have the overhead of maintaining a collection. If we were to become a collecting institution, we would have to solve some logistical problems. In fact, the building was designed without appropriate space for storing and managing a collection.

What was the thinking behind transforming the museum from a collections-based organization to a non-collecting museum?

Stefano Catalani: I think at that time the cost associated with maintaining the collection was too burdensome for the institution, and the museum wanted to become financially leaner. Then, there was already this exciting idea of building the new venue and changing the focus of the museum’s mission. So, I believe this also informed the decision of the board.

Obviously, there has been another change. You are no longer focused on new media and contemporary art practices. Why did that happen?

Stefano Catalani: When the museum moved into this new facility there was a shift in the mission. The institution decided to focus more on cutting edge contemporary art. Ultimately, this change did not resonate with the community that had supported the museum from its inception in the mid 1970s. The original organization was born out of the arts and crafts fair, which turned 66 this year. There was a strong tradition of craft, craftsmanship, skill, and functional objects in the DNA of the institution.

In September 2003, the decision was made to close the museum, to pause, to take a break, and to have a moment of reflection. At that point, the board of trustees went back to the constituency and the community and asked what they wanted the museum to be. The response was to go back to the roots, to go back to where the museum came from in first place.

Michael W. Monroe was hired as Executive Director and Chief Curator in 2004. He came from the Renwick Gallery, part of the National Museum of American Art in Washington DC, with 30 years of experience in and deep knowledge of the fields of craft and design. Michael Monroe strived to make the Bellevue Arts Museum the northwest center for the exploration of art, craft, and design through exhibitions, educational programs, and partnerships with an emphasis on Northwest artists.

That mission overlaps with the Tacoma Art Museum in some ways.

Stefano Catalani: Partially. Tacoma Art Museum definitely has a focus on Northwest art, and because craft is an integral part of the past and present visual and cultural landscape of the Northwest, the two museums overlap. I think this is good thing, a richness that is offered through different perspectives. And we collaborate.

Did the collection that was de-accessioned have a specific focus?

Stefano Catalani: It included both craft and fine art. For example, it included works by Howard Kottler. Kottler is a seminal figure in bringing postmodernism into the ceramics world. He blazed a trail both as a potter and sculptor in the Northwest and in America. The collection also included paintings and sculptures by many regional artists—mixture of things.

Tell me how you came to be involved with the museum.

Stefano Catalani: I started working here in 2005, a month before the most recent incarnation of the museum opened its doors. Before, I worked as the director of a commercial gallery in Seattle for about a year and as a freelance curator.

Did you always have an interest in craft and design?

Stefano Catalani: No, actually. Around 2003 I became interested in artists whose work reclaims the visual and material language of craft in order to investigate their own cultural identity through a recovery of that tradition and its signs and symbols. I was fascinated by the idea of craft as a sign, the idea of craft as a language (which is a sequence of signs) defined by the information it carries with it. At that time, I was writing about Chinese-Australian or Chinese-Canadian artists. I believe Michael Monroe saw my interest as a complement to the more traditional forms and interpretations of craft he was planning to showcase at BAM. This is actually what I’ve been exploring in the last seven years at the museum.

How does contemporary jewelry fit within your museum’s intention to cover art, craft, and design?

Stefano Catalani: I think jewelry is an important form of artistic and cultural expression. It is information delivered through a language of lines in metals and other materials. Jewelry fits within the traditional field of craft—skill has to be harnessed to deliver a product that is functional and functionally crafted—but at the same time, by embodying and delivering meaning, it belongs to the field of art. Featuring jewelry has been quite successful for us. There’s been a strong response to jewelry shows. Jewelry is definitely popular.

Why do you think that is? What is the nature of its popularity?

Stefano Catalani: It’s about objects, things that you can touch. It doesn’t have the sacredness of a painting or sculpture, which demands distance and reverence. In my opinion, jewelry’s function as body ornament lowers our threshold of reverence. Its perception as an object to wear provides an entry point to its sculptural dimension and aesthetic and cultural values. So, there is the opening to another meaning, another sphere.

I come from Italy, a country where paintings and sculptures are in churches, and there is a reverence for them both as cult objects and objects of art. The institution of the museum is often like a church. Museums are temples where we worship art in all its forms. There is this sense of sacredness and reverence that comes into play when one is in front of an image. You almost feel you have to kneel.

I feel a museum that focuses on craft can take advantage of that particular lack of distance and sacred reverence. Unfortunately, we still have to put jewelry under a vitrine, but I think jewelry is popular because everyone can wear it or imagine they are wearing it, and everyone can make a statement about his or her identity or persona or whatever he or she wants to be.

What made you decide to do a series of solo retrospectives of American jewelers?

Stefano Catalani: From an organizational point of view, dealing with one artist’s work is easier. There is the idea of following the evolution of the artist’s work over a certain period of time or over several bodies of work. A group show requires more time to hone the idea, the theme that brings everything together.

We are a small museum. Although we pride ourselves with being nimble, we remain a small organization with limited personnel. There’s not always time to come up with and flesh out good ideas for group shows. Therefore, we supplement our efforts with traveling exhibits. We hosted Think Twice: New Latin American Jewelry, and a few years ago we took Women’s Tales, an exhibition of four leading Israeli jewelers.

In terms of solo exhibitions, we have featured the work of Bruce Metcalf, Lisa Gralnick, Ron Ho, and Mary Lee Hu. (The latter three were internally curated.) With Ron Ho and Mary Lee Hu, the idea was to celebrate important figures in the development of contemporary jewelry in the Northwest.

Tell me about the staff who are involved in curatorial activities.

Stefano Catalani: It’s a small staff. I am the director of curatorial affairs and artistic director, and I am responsible for implementing the museum’s mission and for leading the curatorial department. I share the leadership of the museum with the managing director. Nora Atkinson holds one curatorial position. (She curated the Lisa Gralnick exhibit.) We also have one registrar, a head preparator, and a temporary crew of five or six people to install the exhibitions. To complete the picture, we have an education curator and a part-time youth and family education coordinator.

 How many shows a year do you do?

Stefano Catalani: Eight to ten. There’s not a recipe. It depends on various factors. Usually, the first exhibitions to be scheduled on the calendar are the traveling ones. Then, we juggle the internal projects to fit around the traveling shows. We strive for a half-and-half ratio of in-house to traveling exhibitions.

Contemporary jewelry seems to have a rich history in the Pacific Northwest. Can you tell me about that?

Stefano Catalani: The metals program at the University of Washington was very strong for many decades. It started with Ruth Pennington who was a modernist jeweler. Then, Ramona Solberg came. She was a force of nature for sure and the mentor and teacher of Ron Ho. The tradition continued with Mary Lee Hu, John Marshall, Andy Cooperman, Laurie Hall, and Nancy Warden. Through the physical and cultural environ of the metals program, which was dissolved in 2006, there was a creative continuity at the University of Washington. Metalsmiths and jewelers handed down their visions and legacies to their students, fostering creativity in service of their vision.

The Pacific Northwest has a very subdued cultural attitude toward ostentation and public display. They say it is a legacy of the Scandinavian immigrants to this region. And yet, for a place where simplicity and lack of adornment seem to be held as moral virtues, there’s such an incredible wealth and tradition of jewelers and metalsmiths!

Ursula Ilse-Neuman is Curator of Jewelry at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York. Recognized internationally as a writer, lecturer and curator, she has worked at the museum for over two decades and in that time, has organized a great number of exhibitions on contemporary jewelry and the wider field of craft. Her most recent exhibition, Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta, co-curated with Julie M Muñiz from the Oakland Museum of California, continues to receive acclaim on both sides of the continent. Ilse-Neuman’s April 2012 presentation on De Patta at SOFA NY can be found on AJF’s website. Damian Skinner joined Ms Ilse-Neuman recently for orange juice and gravlax and had the chance to ask her some questions about herself, the Museum of Arts and Design and collecting art jewelry.

Damian Skinner: Tell me about your background. How did you come to be working at the Museum of Arts and Design?

Ursula Ilse-Neuman: I would have to say hard work coupled with serendipity brought me to MAD. When I was pursuing a graduate degree in the decorative arts in the Cooper Hewitt/Parsons Masters program, one of my professors asked me and several other students to work on an upcoming exhibition at the American Craft Museum, the forerunner of the Museum of Arts and Design. Around that time, the museum had been planning an exhibition on the Weimar and Dessau workshops of the German Bauhaus, but it was proving difficult to get the objects together. Janet Kardon, who was director at the time, sensed that my German background made this project a natural fit for me and charged me with rescuing the exhibition from a long history of missteps. It was a baptism by fire. Dessau and Weimar are important repositories of the early craft-oriented Bauhaus work but getting national treasures out of what was still East Germany and into the United States turned out to be impossible. In the end I found examples of the objects we wanted for the exhibition from private and museum collections in the United States. My most memorable experience was in Dessau where Konrad Püschel, a former Bauhaus student, invited me to his home and over coffee and cake, regaled me with stories of his student days and gave me important insights into how the Bauhaus actually functioned.

After the Bauhaus exhibition, I went on to curate exhibitions in all the traditional media, traveling the country to meet such icons as Wendell Castle, Garry Knox-Bennett, Sam Maloof and Beatrice Wood. Being born and raised in Germany, the history of American craft was a revelation and very different from the German experience during the twentieth century. Almost immediately I fell in love with this unique and exciting field.

And when you say all the traditional media, do you mean craft?

Yes, the traditional craft media: wood, metal, glass, ceramics, fiber, mixed media – I did them all. I organized a retrospective of Garry Knox Bennett’s furniture, a major exhibition of international art quilts that traveled to the Tokyo Dome and Taiwan, ceramics by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, glass from the Czech Republic featuring Libenský and Brychtová, as well as many other well-received projects. I take great pride in these exhibitions and the publications produced to accompany many of them. Publications are an enduring legacy after the close of an exhibition.

So why did you decide to focus on jewelry?

Because it is a passion, pure and simple. With each jewelry exhibition, I became more immersed in art jewelry. As a European – especially one whose hometown is Munich, where jewelry is celebrated – I began to dream of being the contemporary art jewelry emissary for the museum and even for the country. Finally, four years ago, after the museum had changed its name and moved into its new building at 2 Columbus Circle, the museum director offered me the newly created post of Curator of Contemporary Jewelry, the first such position in this country. I was very happy to accept.

And when you say you love art jewelry, what does that mean?

I love the fact that contemporary jewelry has meaningful content – it is about social and political, philosophical and existential issues of great importance today. I love the experimentation and innovation, too. Craftsmanship and mastery of materials and techniques are critical and artists frequently introduce cutting-edge materials and techniques to create new and highly expressive forms. I love seeing traditions transformed or subverted. And I love the idea that contemporary jewelry is not pure ornament but introduces concepts related to the human body and psyche and frequently addresses ideas prevalent in the visual arts today. One of the most rewarding and enjoyable aspects of my role is getting to know jewelry artists. They are very special people and I admire their dedication and how they are able work in a small, intimate format to express big ideas. 

Do you wear a lot of jewelry yourself?

Not a lot, but I do collect a bit and I always wear the jewelry I collect. My pearls and my grandmother’s jewelry rarely see the light of day now.

Who made the jewelry you are wearing today?

I practically live in Eva Eisler’s eminently wearable necklaces and brooches. She’s a Czech jeweler who lived in New York for many years but has now moved back to Prague, where she chairs the Metals Department at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. My enameled silver earrings are by Todd Pardon, the son of Earl Pardon. I recently acquired some pieces by Mieke Groot, a Dutch glass artist and jeweler and I am fortunate to own several works by Thomas Gentille, a New York artist who has contributed a great deal to my passion for jewelry. Our discussions and visits to galleries and studios to look at jewelry together have been invaluable to my appreciation of the field.

So what is the place of jewelry within the museum?

Jewelry occupies a very important place at MAD. We have the only permanent gallery expressly for contemporary art jewelry in the United States and we are very proud of it. We were fortunate to have the support of the Tiffany Foundation when we worked on the plans for the new jewelry gallery on Columbus Circle. The gallery incorporates all of the museum’s dreams. It allows us to install temporary exhibitions and at the same time keep a substantial part of our permanent collection on view in drawers that visitors can open. We change the selection of works in the drawers every few months and it surprises and delights people to get a sense of our holdings. We also offer computer access to our entire collection so visitors can do their own research right from the gallery. The studios on the sixth floor are a highlight, too. Accomplished jewelry artists are invited to work in these spaces and discuss the jewelry they are making with visitors. And, of course, we regularly offer workshops where people can learn a range of jewelry techniques and come away with their own creations.

How do you deal with the problem of jewelry oftentimes being for the body and a museum being a place without the body?

For me, the idea of jewelry as being originally designed with the body in mind is sufficient; it doesn’t necessarily have to be wearable or be seen on the body. I even like to see jewelry presented as a metaphor, as in Jeff Koons’s oversized jewelry-inspired sculptures that may represent luxury, or perhaps wretched excess. I think jewelry is far more interesting than it gets credit for. I also like to see jewelry in context. MAD doesn’t have extensive historical decorative and fine arts collections or photography collections that can be shown alongside jewelry, so this requires getting loans from other museums, as well as from galleries and private collectors. In the recent De Patta retrospective, for example, I borrowed several important works by De Patta’s mentor, László Moholy-Nagy, the founder of the Chicago Bauhaus, where De Patta studied for a period in the forties. And we also showed films made by Moholy-Nagy and we got these from his daughter, Hattula, who heads the Moholy-Nagy Foundation in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Without these contextual pieces, the extent to which Moholy’s Constructivist ideas permeated De Patta’s works throughout her career could not have been made clear.

Does MAD focus on jewelry that is handmade and on craft processes?

Not handmade per se. That would have been true earlier in the museum’s history. While we still concentrate on one-of-a-kind objects, today’s artists and craftsmen are constantly innovating with new technology and incredibly exciting work is being done with rapid prototyping, with photographic manipulations and with laser cutting. The materials and techniques employed today go far beyond those mastered by traditional craftspersons working in wood, metal, glass, ceramics, or fiber. Jewelry artists today are exploring uncharted waters.

Nevertheless, we continue to maintain a strong interest in process and craftsmanship. A very important part of our jewelry collection dates from our origins as the Museum of Contemporary Craft in 1956. Aileen Osborn Webb, the museum’s founder, became involved in helping American craftsmen in the 1940s, at the start of what is now recognized as the studio jewelry movement, so our collection was formed around pieces by such legendary American jewelers as Art Smith, Sam Kramer, Margaret De Patta, Claire Falkenstein and Ed Weiner. This was a uniquely American scene, totally different from what was going on in Europe in the forties and fifties, yet so important to all that followed in this country and internationally. It always surprises me when jewelry experts from Europe or Asia have little knowledge of mid-century American jewelers. 

How big is the museum’s collection of contemporary art jewelry?

We have about 700 art jewelry pieces in the collection now, with three times as many promised gifts coming into the collection in the future. Promised gifts are bequeathed to the museum during a collector’s lifetime and are then signed over to the museum at some future date or at the end of life. Generally, we have the right to borrow these promised gifts as they are needed for exhibitions.

Why would people not give the work straight away?

Because they want to continue to wear the jewelry and that’s quite understandable. We have researched these collections and know we want them, even if we have to wait. 

So you are interested in working with collectors to develop the collection?

Yes, of course. All of the museum’s curators work to enlarge the collections. We always aim to keep a balance in the different media. We all have special people, friends of the museum, who are stalwart supporters and have repeatedly come through with pieces for the collection.

What would you tell a collector who was interested in knowing what MAD is looking for in terms of contemporary jewelry? What would be of interest to you?

Basically, we are interested in collecting work from the end of World War II to the present. We acquire some contextual pieces from the arts and crafts movement or other historical periods, but our main focus is contemporary jewelry from all over the world. I am always looking for innovative ideas, where the concept is carried out through masterful craftsmanship, whether the materials are precious or nonprecious. Before a new piece enters the collection it will be carefully scrutinized, not only by me, but an entire committee whose members have to approve of the new acquisition. I have a huge wish list that I regularly update to keep it current. Several years ago, I initiated a strategy to collect the models, sketches and working drawings artists used to create the pieces we collect. I am particularly proud of the many contributions artists have made and the insight these materials provide to the creative process when shown together with the jewelry.

What is the museum’s collecting philosophy? How do you wish to represent people within the collection? One good piece? A number of pieces to characterize their careers?

It varies. Sometimes we select an example from a particular period of an artist’s work. For some well-known artists, we may acquire several pieces from various stages in their careers. This is particularly relevant of artists who have made substantial contributions to the field over extended periods of time, including Arline Fisch, Robert Ebendorf, David Watkins and Wendy Ramshaw, Gijs Bakker and Otto Künzli. And there would be many more. 

So there are no formal restrictions governing when someone’s jewelry can be considered for the collection?

No. Of course, an artist’s reputation plays a part. I think immediately of Hermann Jünger, Francesco Pavan, Giampaolo Babetto and Annmaria Zanella from Europe, or prominent American artists such as Jamie Bennett, Bruce Metcalf and Thomas Gentille, to mention only three, or historical figures including Margaret De Patta, Art Smith and Sam Kramer. Of course, we seek out their finest examples for the collection. But we also want interesting and surprising pieces of high quality from Asia, Latin America and Africa, as well as from lesser-known and emerging artists. In this regard, I really do want to be more adventurous.

That’s an interesting issue. At what point does it seem appropriate to collect the work of a younger maker?

I work hard to keep abreast of the field and to follow the careers of younger artists to see whether they continue to progress. Each March, I religiously make a pilgrimage to Schmuck in Munich to become acquainted with international trends and emerging talents and, closer to home, I regularly attend gallery openings all over the tri-state area. I also crisscross the country to participate in jewelry symposia and art fairs, including SOFA. Recently, I participated in JOYA, the Contemporary Jewellery Week in Barcelona, where younger international artists presented and discussed their work and where several jewelry schools, including from Brazil and China, participated. Since this is a dynamic field, energized by jewelry programs around the world, I also try to keep up on the latest developments through the internet – Klimt is a great site. It’s non-stop learning.

I think I have acquired an understanding of what has good potential and enduring value, what doesn’t; what is maybe just a one-night stand, so to speak. I consider concept, craftsmanship, whether similar work has been done by the artist’s peers or predecessors. If geographic distinctions are apparent, I consider them, too, although nowadays artists are connected globally and making a national or geographic distinction is often not possible. All these factors play a part in the selection process –as does the allocation of funds for a purchase.

What are your upcoming contemporary jewelry projects?

Currently, I’m organizing a large exhibition of jewelry that includes or relates to photography. This is going to be a remarkable exhibition. The artists come from all over the world and their work is exciting and up-to-the-minute. Basically, they turn nineteenth-century photo jewelry on its head. We will include some of this early photo jewelry for context – daguerreotypes, tintypes, miniature portraits, mourning jewelry – but the main thrust of the show is contemporary: artists who take photo jewelry where it has never been before. 

 Do you think the infrastructure of contemporary jewelry is healthy? What is it like being a curator at the moment?

Contemporary jewelry has gained great international momentum and is gaining greater recognition in the United States, thanks to museums like MAD through its continuing leadership in collecting contemporary jewelry and championing the creative process. Thanks also to people like Susan Cummins and Helen Drutt and others who have been instrumental in supporting the field. It’s still very much a field that deserves a wider audience and we all have to work together to make this wonderful form of artistic expression more visible and better understood. I look forward to even better times ahead.