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Brooklyn Museum Presents Solid Gold
June 14, 2024, 7:20.27 pm ET

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Photo: Ebrié artist. Snake Pendant, 19th century.Gold. Brooklyn Museum

Solid Gold is an Expansive Exhibition Exploring Gold Through Six Thousand Years of History. Commemorating the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th Anniversary, the exhibition will feature over 400 gold objects ranging from fashion, jewelry, and luxury objects to painting, sculpture, and film and will be on view from November 15, 2024 to July 6, 2025.


Photo: Lorenzo Monaco.Madonna of Humility,ca.1415.Brooklyn Museum

Gold—as a medium and a color—has held significance throughout human history. It is often used to represent the apex of beauty, honor, joy, ritual, spirituality, success, and wealth. It has been transformed into myriad forms: from millennia-old depictions of an idealized world to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian altarpieces, from Japanese screens to haute couture fashions, one-of-a-kind jewelry and contemporary sculptures.


Photo: Wreath, Greek, 3rd–2nd century B.C.E. Gold. Brooklyn Museum

“Solid Gold will transport visitors through the many worlds of gold, its joyful (though sometimes heartbreaking) histories, and its innumerable luminous expressions across cultures, past and present.” says Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum. “As a museum dedicated to bridging art and people in shared experiences, audiences will find inspiration, opening them to unexplored realms of beauty in their world.”

Organized in eight sections, Solid Gold will present historical works in visual juxtaposition and “collisions'' with contemporary objects and fashions, sparking dynamic conversations across time and space. Entry galleries explore manifestations of ancient gold, pairing antiquities from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection with iconic twentieth- and twenty-first-century objects.


Photo: Mummy Cartonnage of a Woman, 1st century C.E.. Brooklyn Museum

Highlights include a large wooden sarcophagus from Dynasty 22 (945–740 BCE), which will be on display to the public for the first time in over one hundred years. The coffin is decorated with images and inscriptions painted with yellow orpiment pigments to imitate gold inlays. Contemporary objects include the prototype of a fly necklace made for legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor for the film Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963); and theatrical gowns from Christian Dior (2004; John Galliano, creative director) that blend elements of Egyptian history and Dior’s then-controversial “H-Line” from 1954. A dress by Azzedine Alaïa for Tina Turner (1989) exemplifies modern applications of draped chainmail (with pearls). Displays of gold chains continue with modern interpretations like the “dookie rope” and “Cuban links,” celebrating their popularity throughout hip-hop culture in the 1980s and onward.

For more information, visit https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/



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