12 Dutch Designs Featured in “Jewelry of Ideas” Show at Cooper Hewitt

Fri, Nov 17 - Mon, May 28  2018

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

From November 17, 2017, through May 28, 2018, the exhibition “Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection” will be on view at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 12 designs by Dutch artists are featured in the exhibition. On November 17, there will also be an all-day long symposium with Dutch artist Iris Eichenberg. 

About the exhibition

“Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection,” opening Nov. 17, celebrates the recent gift from the renowned collector to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. On view through May 28, 2018, the exhibition, co-curated by Ursula Ilse-Neuman and Cooper Hewitt, features 150 brooches, necklaces, bracelets and rings, and traces radical developments in jewelry from the mid-20th century to the present. Works on view highlight jewelry design’s expressive and innovative achievements, ranging from works that make a political statement by eschewing silver and gold for industrial materials, to pieces that employ found materials to tell a personal narrative.

The exhibition captures the diversity and achievement of modern and contemporary jewelry designers from Germany, Holland, Japan, Israel, the United States and elsewhere. Many of the pieces confront social, political or personal concerns using unconventional materials and techniques. Contained within a ring may be a history of the mathematical proportions of the Palladian villas of the Veneto, as in the case of Giampaolo Babetto. Within a bracelet may be a rejection of the cult of the precious, as seen in Otto Künzli’s “Gold Makes You Blind,” where an 18-karat gold ball is encased in a rubber bangle.

The Dutch designers in the exhibition are the following:

– Gijs Bakker (b.1942)

– Rian de Jong (b. 1951)

– Maria Hees (b. 1948)

– Herman Hermsen (b. 1953)

– Peter Hoogeboom (b. 1961)

– Beppe Kessler (b. 1952)

– Ted Noten (b. 1956)

– Ruudt Peters (b. 1950)

– Katja Prins (b. 1970)

– Frank Tjepkema (b. 1970)

– Felieke van der Leest (Dutch, active Norway, b. 1968)

– Emmy van Leersum (1930 – 1984)

Jewelry of Ideas Symposium

Explore the world of contemporary jewelry design with esteemed scholars and renowned jewelers during this day-long symposium highlighting the exhibition Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from The Susan Grant Lewin Collection.

Novemer 17, 2017, Schedule

Morning Session (10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.)

Keynote address with Iris Eichenberg, jeweler, artist, and educator, followed by a discussion with Bruce Metcalf, jeweler, author and educator, and Thomas Gentille, jeweler and educator, focusing on trends and developments in European and American contemporary jewelry.

Lunch Break (12:00-1:30 p.m.)

Afternoon session #1 (1:30-3:00 p.m.)

Jeweler Myra Mimlitsch-Gray and collector Helen Drutt will discuss communicating ideas through jewelry, moderated by Kiff Slemmons, jeweler and metalsmith.

Break (3:00-3:30 p.m.)

Afternoon session #2 (3:30-5:00 p.m.) 

Jamie Bennett, jeweler, enamellist, and educator, and Doug Bucci, jewelry designer and educator, will discuss materials and methods, new and old, moderated by art and design journalist and jewelry collector Lindsay Pollock.

About the museum

Founded in 1897, Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. Housed in the renovated and restored Carnegie Mansion, Cooper Hewitt showcases one of the most diverse and comprehensive collections of design works in existence. The museum’s restoration, modernization and expansion has won numerous awards and honors, including a Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a Gold Pencil Award for Best in Responsive Environments and LEED Silver certification. Cooper Hewitt offers a full range of interactive capabilities and immersive creative experiences, including the Cooper Hewitt Pen that allows visitors to “collect” and “save” objects from around the galleries, the opportunity to explore the
collection digitally on ultra-high-definition touch-screen tables, and draw and project their own wallpaper designs in the Immersion Room.