Press Room

Featuring 170 objects, including 10 video works, by more than 80 artists from over 20 countries 

New York, NY (May 8, 2014)

On view at the Museum of Arts and Design from May 13 to September 14, 2014, Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography is the first museum exhibition to examine how contemporary jewelry artists are using photography to explore issues central to contemporary experience, including changing views of beauty and the human body; social, political, and cultural issues; memory and desire; and the relationship of jewelry to society and personal identity.

Today’s revolution in image creation, manipulation, and transmission has served as a catalyst for the artists featured in Multiple Exposures to take a serious look at the pictures in our lives—the Daguerreotypes, tintypes, and Kodachromes we have inherited from earlier times, as well as the digital images currently streaming from our cameras, computers, and smart phones. Focusing on contemporary works and featuring 170 objects, Multiple Exposures not only provides historical context for this evolving 200-year-old relationship, but also delves into recent developments in contemporary photo-jewelry through cutting-edge videos and installations.

More than 80 renowned artists from over 20 countries are represented in the exhibition, including Gijs Bakker, Wafaa Bilal, Mari Ishikawa, Jiro Kamata, Sooyeon Kim, Otto Künzli, Iris Nieuwenburg, Kara Ross, Gabriela Sánchez y Sánchez de la Barquera, Bernhard Schobinger, Bettina Speckner, Joyce J. Scott, Kiff Slemmons, Andy Warhol, and Noa Zilberman.

"Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography offers the first rigorous survey and exploration of the deep and multifaceted relationship between these two mediums," says Glenn Adamson, MAD’s Nanette L. Laitman Director. "The exhibition gives viewers the opportunity to engage with contemporary artists who push the boundaries of one field using the other, reinvigorating familiar forms while inventing new ones."

A press preview and walkthrough for the exhibition will be held on Tuesday, May 13, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Exhibition curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman and a number of the featured artists will be present. 

“In spite of their distinct histories and traits, or perhaps because of them, the fusion of these two mediums has resulted in a potent synergy that has reshaped jewelry,” observes Ilse-Neuman. “Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography captures the artistic strength embodied in this dynamic combination of object and image.”

The exhibition is loosely organized around the following thematic threads: Identity and Representation, in which artists push the boundaries of portrait jewelry using images of family and friends, the celebrated and notorious, as well as anonymous individuals whose histories have been lost in time; The Body, featuring the changing concepts of beauty and imperfection  of the human form as well as its interior; Landscape, architecture and their symbolic content; Appropriation, in which artists hijack and transform iconic imagery from the fine arts and popular culture as a way to comment on contemporary concerns; Tributes to cameras and photographic paraphernalia, featuring the imaginative and unexpectedly wearable pieces of jewelry created from dismantled camera components; and finally Jewelry Beyond the Object—its social and cultural significance beyond function and conventions—expressed through cutting-edge videos and photographs.

Context for the contemporary pieces in the exhibition is provided by 19^th-century photo-jewelry featuring daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes, as well as trench jewelry from the First and Second World Wars, many exhibited for the first time.

Highlights from the exhibition include:

• Gijs Bakker’s transformation of a Bruce Weber photograph of an athletic male nude pouring a bucket of water over his back into his sensuous and luxurious Waterman brooch (1991) by replacing the water droplets with diamonds, encasing the image in PVC, and attaching a pin. 

• Jiro Kamata believes old lenses contain the history of all that has passed through them, and his Arboresque brooch (2010) blends colorfully painted lenses with lyrical forms to conjure rich associations with time, spirit, and mortality. 

• In Piece X (2011), Gabriela Sánchez y Sánchez de la Barquera subverts the refined aesthetics of cameos by using the form to frame a close-up photograph of body parts her friend considers to be unattractive and embarrassing.

• Lauren Kalman’s videos examine the grotesque aspects of body ornamentation.  As her Tongue Gilding (2009) video progresses, what initially appears to be beautiful gilding can be seen as an instrument of torture as the tongue trembles and drips saliva in near asphyxiation.

• Otto Künzli, one of the most provocative and influential jewelry artists of the last 40 years, experimented with the essential qualities of jewelry in a photo booth in Munich’s central train station.  His groundbreaking Automatenfotos (1976) document the process, as he tries out every imaginable combination of tape, wires, laces, and wooden rods on his own torso.  The simple black-and-white photo strips he used to record his ideas set contemporary jewelry on a revolutionary path.

• Bettina Speckner, one of the leading contemporary photo-jewelry artists, often obscures the faces in 19^th-century portrait ferrotypes to transport the subjects into the existential ambiguity of the 21^st century. In Untitled (2004), she uses her own bucolic landscape photographs and a complex photo-enameling technique to create a familiar pastoral atmosphere, but one devoid of nostalgia and decidedly of our time.

• Sooyeon Kim’s beautifully fragile neckpiece House on Benefit Street (2010) deconstructs a beloved house in Providence, Rhode Island, reflecting on Walter Benjamin’s assertion that “photographs can act as a window on the architecture they depict.”

• In Hindsight (1997), Kiff Slemmons frames eyes with a lorgnette made from a clock-hand, creating a contemporary reinterpretation of earlier sentimental “lover’s eyes” miniatures, in a collage that unifies the juxtaposed images to form the face of the brooch.

• Bernhard Schobinger retrieved discarded photographs from the rubbish for his Zerrissene Photographie (1985) neckpiece, weaving the torn images together into a fragmented glimpse of a lost family history he re-invented.

• Ruudt Peters’ Ritual (2007) reworks a family tradition of protecting a child with a religious medallion by replacing that revered image with his own smiling face.

• In Minnesota Fats Commemorative Medal (1971), Don Tompkins depicts the notorious pool shark popularized in the film The Hustler, incorporating such symbolic attributes as a billiard ball rack and a cultured pearl cue ball. 

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND CREDITS

Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography is organized by MAD’s Curator of Jewelry, Ursula Ilse-Neuman, assisted by Sophia Merkin, curatorial assistant and project manager for the exhibition, and Barbara Paris Gifford, curatorial resident. The remarkable exhibition design is by Rupert Deese.

Support for Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography has been provided by Hasselblad, Kara Ross NY, Betsy Z. and Edward E. Cohen, Washington Square Hotel, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, Creative New Zealand, Janet Kardon, and Frame Finland, as well as through the generosity of the Inner Circle, one of the Museum's leadership support groups. Additional thanks to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, the Official Airline of MAD.

CATALOGUE

A full color, illustrated, 254-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes Curator of Jewelry Ursula Ilse-Neuman’s lead essay, “The Image Transformed: Contemporary Photo-Jewelry” on the dramatic transformations in both media that are reflected in the burst of creative energy captured in the exhibition. It is followed by seven essays by prominent experts on a range of topics: photography historian and critic Lyle Rexer discusses the significance of historic photo jewelry in “Science, Sentiment, and Status: Early Photo Jewelry;” author, curator and editor of Metalsmith magazine Suzanne Ramljak analyzes the role of photographic portraiture in contemporary art jewelry in “Saving Face: Photo Portrait Jewelry;” MAD’s William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator Lowery Sims addresses the manipulation and beautification of the human figure in “Wearing the Body;” author and critic Ellen Maurer-Zilioli focuses on landscapes and cityscapes—both real and imagined— in “Remembered Places—Imagined Spaces;” Curator of Decorative Arts at the Toledo Museum of Art Jutta Page considers the ways in which jewelry artists co-opt well-known artworks and pop culture icons in their work in “The Appropriated Image in Contemporary Jewelry;” photography expert Mark Durant examines the use of cameras and photographic paraphernalia as raw materials for art jewelry in “Lost Lenses and Orphaned Apertures: Apparatus Transformed;” and Dutch author and jewelry curator Liesbeth den Besten examines jewelry beyond the physical object and other cutting-edge concepts in “Jewelry through the Lens.”

The catalogue is edited by Nancy Preu, designed by Henk van Assen of HvA Design, and published by Officinia Libraria.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

EXPOSED: Contemporary Jewelers and the Photograph 
Panel Discussion
Tuesday, May 13, 2014 – 6 p.m.
Free (Seating is on a first come basis)

Since the late 1830s, photographs have been integrated into jewelry as tokens of memory, devotion, or mourning.  Contemporary photo-based jewelry extends these traditional functions and forms, while enlisting new technologies and techniques to engage a great variety of personal and social concerns. Organized by MAD Jewelry Curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman in collaboration with Suzanne Ramljak, editor of Metalsmith magazine, this panel discussion will address historical precedents for today’s photo jewelry and explore the wide range of cutting-edge approaches in both digital-image technology and innovative jewelry making. Through diverse combinations of these two creative practices, contemporary jewelers are expanding jewelry’s role as a carrier of cultural meaning as well as an agent of intervention on the human body. 

Panelists include: Robert Ebendorf, Lauren Kalman, Lyle Rexer, and Bettina Speckner.

Curator-Led Tour of Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography
Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 6:30 p.m.
Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission

MAD’s Jewelry curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman leads an hour-long tour of Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography, focusing on some of its most revelatory works.

Designer–Led Tour of Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography
Thursday, July 24, 2014 - 6:30 p.m.
Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission

Rupert Deese leads a tour of Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography, focusing on some of its most revelatory works and the thinking behind the exhibition’s design and presentation.

Multiple Memories: Photography and Jewelry as Remembrance Tour
Thursday, August 14, 2014 - 6:30 p.m.
Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission

This hour-long tour with museum educator Carli Beseau focuses on the ways jewelry in the exhibition addresses photography, anonymity, and collective memory.

Editions of You: Workshops in Photo Jewelry

Led by Jewelry artist David Mandel, the hands-on workshop series Editions of You: Workshops in Photo Jewelry explores themes and techniques featured in the exhibition Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography while teaching participants how to transform photographs into unique jewelry pieces.

• Pictogram Brooches and Pendants: Saturday, May 31, 2014, 1pm
• Lenses of Life: Charm Bracelets and Necklaces: Saturday, June 21, 2014, 1pm
• Shall We Selfie Together? Hanging Photo Pendants: Saturday, July 19, 2014, 1pm

No previous experience is required and all materials are provided. Cost per workshop is $65 ($55 for MAD Members).

Artist Studios: Leah Wolf 
Saturdays, ongoing, starting June 7, 2014
Free with admission  

Resident artist Leah Wolf will experiment with photo transfers and ceramics in the Artist Studios, sharing her practice with visitors. 

AAMD Museum Day
Sunday, May 18, 2014, 10am
Free Admission to Special Programs

• Multiple Exposures: Hands On Button-Making with MAD’s Teen Trustees: 10 - 4pm
• MADlab Classroom: Exploring Photo Transfers: 12 - 4pm

Artist & Youth Workshop: Instagram Influencers (For Teens)
Friday May 23, 2014, 4pm
Free for teens

Join MAD's Teen Trustees after school for snacks, a roundtable discussion and a photography workshop with one of the artists featured in Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography. Teens will experiment with filters, angles, and hashtags, and explore the role of photography in daily life. 

Studio Sunday: Wearable Photography
June 22, 2:00pm – 4:00pm
$10 per person (Admission is included)

In this intergenerational workshop for families, play with the personal nature of jewelry and ponder the significance of wearable artwork after viewing Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography. Participants will work with artist Educator Cathy Rosamond to experiment with black and white photography, creating buttons of their favorite images from around the museum.

AUTO-SELFIE: The Hasselblad Photo Booth
Providing a unique, interactive experience for visitors, the Museum of Arts and Design has partnered with iconic Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad to design ‘Auto-Selfie: The Hasselblad Photo Booth’, a customized, self-sufficient photo booth housed in the Tiffany gallery. Visitors have the opportunity to experiment with proportion, dimension, and shape (in the vein of featured artist Otto Künzli who, in his Automatenfotos series, used images of himself taken in a photo booth as research material for his work) by stepping in front of the Hasselblad Lunar camera, posing with their own jewelry or props, and smiling—which will activate the device’s Smile Shutter and snap a photo. The image will be available to share instantly via social media, text, or email using the tablet at the end of the installation. 

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields, presenting artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill to their work. Since the Museum’s founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving 21^st-century innovation, fostering a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.

(March 28, 2014-updated May 8, 2014)