07/06/2022
Jewelry is a challenging category in decorative arts. Though more than just ornament, it is often weighted down by religious and cultural associations, and treated as ethnological objects rather than art. But that is changing, as an important new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York suggests. The Body Transformed, which opened on November 12 and remains on view through February 24, showcases some 230 objects drawn almost exclusively from the Met’s own vast collections, and involving all seventeen curatorial departments. The largest exhibition of its kind ever organized by the museum, it approaches jewelry as a universal art form; the opening label notes that it is also the oldest one, predating cave painting by thousands of years.
