A History of Jewelry Debuts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Latest Exhibition, The Body ...

"Jewelry: The Body Transformed" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art brings together four millennia of jeweled adornments and represents a collaboration between no less than six curators: Melanie Holcomb, Kim Benzel, Soyoung Lee, Diana Craig Patch, Joanne Pillsbury, and Beth Carver Wees Modern works include Shaun Leane's Yashmak body armor of aluminum plaques and ruby blood droplets and eyelashes of Swarovski crystal, originally conceived for Alexander McQueen in 2000, along with his brilliant ear-piercing dart earring of 2006 "All are precious objects made specially for the body, a setting like no other" The elegant design sets up several sets of glass columns in a grid-like formation at the beginning of the exhibition in which variants of the Surrealists' "Exquisite corpse" works with disparate adornments from head to toe are arranged at the correct height in their respective vitrines.

There are Hellenistic golden-serpentine sea-god bracelets and eighth-century Javanese-gold ear ornaments that look like underwater creatures In the late 18th century, elaborate aesthetically coordinated parures comprising such elements as tiaras, necklaces, stomacher brooches, earrings, and bracelets were the preserve of empresses and queens, but the genre was soon adapted using less costly materials-including semiprecious stones such as amethyst, as well as coral, seed pearls, and sets of cameos-thus dramatically lowering the price points and giving middle-class customers a chance to adorn themselves like the monarch's consort The Dahomey kingdom in the Republic of Benin introduced status in a different way, including representations of such coveted objects as automobiles and armaments in their early-20th-century silver jewels. Source