Projects & Press
Curated Exhibitions
A VIEW FROM THE JEWELER'S BENCH: ANCIENT TREASURES, CONTEMPORARY IDEAS
(Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York, NY. February 13-July 15, 2019)
Contemporary art jewelry is intimately connected to artistic identity, and primarily driven by a concept. A View from the Jeweler’s Bench: Ancient Treasures, Contemporary Statements emphasizes the voices of contemporary jewelers who deliberately appropriate ancient and historical jewelry styles and techniques. The exhibition will highlight the role of the maker in determining the form of the final jewel, and will include a jeweler’s bench, process sketches, and tools alongside jewelry pieces from antiquity to the present. Traditional and current processes employed by jewelers will be displayed alongside contemporary and historical jewels and artifacts. This will illuminate the connections between present and past – in terms of form, technique, and materials – that link modern jewelry and its forerunners while highlighting how contemporary jewelry artists are considering adornment uniquely. The extraordinary objects selected for the exhibition materialize the changing contexts of jewelry through time.
Exhibition Installation Photography
Bard Graduate Center Gallery exhibition page
Exhibition Press:
Antiques Magazine, May, 2019. Read.
Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2019. Read
WAG Magazine, March, 2019. Read
Forbes, January 12, 2019. Read
FAKE NEWS AND TRUE LOVE: FOURTEEN STORIES BY ROBERT BAINES
(Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY. October 15, 2018-February 3, 2019)
It’s easy to fall into the trap of sensational headlines. Even careful and informed readers must work to resist the pull of fake news, a phenomenon currently dominating American media. In his solo exhibition Fake News and True Love: Fourteen Stories by Robert Baines, the Australian contemporary artist explores this issue through the lens of jewelry. By making up and “fact-checking” news stories to accompany his works, Baines manipulates what is accepted as truth to address the influence that fake news has on our perception of events.
Fake News and True Love is a clever examination of jewelry as a document of popular cultural history. The artist’s fanciful pieces and accompanying “evidence” encourage belief in the fourteen stories he presents. Baines has fabricated alternate realities that span from B.C.E. to the present day and encompass an equally wide range of topics, including migration, conspiracy, forgery, celebrity, and politics. His rings, parures, neckpieces, and bracelets show the misunderstandings that design can create, emphasizing the constructed nature of collective history. Through satire and humor, he cautions that linear narration can be confused with myth, riddle, puzzle, and possible subversions of history. Is the story true or fake?
Fake News and True Love: Fourteen Stories by Robert Baines is curated by MAD’s Assistant Curator Barbara Paris Gifford and Windgate Curatorial Intern Sasha Nixon.
Previous iterations were shown at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, as part of the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award exhibition, 2006; Designmuseo, Helsinki, 2008; Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, 2008–2009; and Handwerkskammer für München und Oberbayern, Munich, 2010
NEW YORK CITY JEWELRY WEEK
(Pratt Manhattan, SPCS Gallery, as part of NYC Jewelry Week, New York, NY. November 12-18 2018)
NYC Jewelry Week is NYC’s first and only week dedicated to promoting the world of jewelry through educational and innovative NYC focused programming. In its inaugural year, NYCJW will feature groundbreaking exhibitions, educational lectures, explorative workshops, exclusive tours, and unique collaborations with the best and brightest businesses, brands, individual jewelers, artists, and designers throughout NYC.
ANTIQUEMANIA
Both a timeless visual feast and an intellectual retreat, Antiquemania is a present-day cabinet of curiosities, where it is possible to explore jewelry’s traditional, organic and innovative materials, together with universal ideas of beauty, desire, memory, nature, death... Antiquemania brings together an eclectic group of contemporary jewelers whose different approaches to historical jewelry create an enriching visual dialogue between the past and the present, ancient and contemporary identity, materials, techniques, and aesthetics.
LIST OF JEWELRY DESIGNERS (Artist bios)
Isabelle Busnel - France
Ashley Buchanan - Atlanta, GA
Miranda Leigh - Brooklyn, NYC
Jennifer Trask - Lake Tahoe, NV
Melanie Bilenker - Philadelphia, PA
Kelly Jean Conroy - Boston, MA
Rachel Andrea Davis - Bayview, WI
Alicia Jane Boswell - Lake Worth, FL
Jeanette Caines and Mike Ellis (Jewelry Arts Inc.) - Manhattan, NYC
"Museum Collections as Artist Resource," Left to right: Sasha Nixon (Museum of Arts and Design), Emily Stoehrer (Museum of Fine Arts Boston), Beth Carver Wees (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Bard Graduate Center, June 17, 2019.
Talks and Symposia
Panelist “45 Stories in Jewelry Committee Roundtable,” NYC Jewelry Week. New York, NY.
November, 2020.
Workshop “Pendants at Home,” the Museum of Arts and Design. New
York, NY. May, 2020.
“What, How and Why We Wear it: Jewelry Etiquette,” NYC Jewelry Week. The Jewelry Library, New
York, NY, November 2019.
“Skill and Process in Ancient Greek and Roman Jewelry,” Bard Graduate Center. New York, NY, 2019.
“Professional Practices,” for Rutgers University MFAs, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY,
2019.
"Marrying Old and New: Ancient Treasures and Contemporary Statements with Sasha Nixon, Historian, Curator, and Practicing Metalsmith," Jewelry Journey Podcast: Episode 29. June 24, 2019. Listen.
"Museum Collections as Artist Resource," June 17, 2019. Bard Graduate Center. Read.
"Jewelry Recoded: Adornment, Subversion, and Desire," A study day organized by NYC Jewelry Week and Bard Graduate Center. June 8, 2019. Read.
"Artist Perspectives: Contemporary Jewelry and Ancient Technique," March 27, 2019. Bard Graduate Center. Read.
"The Allure of Gold," March 16, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Read.
"Antiquemania: Artist's Panel," November 18, 2018. Pratt Institute.
"Pixels Bejeweled: Modern Media, Contemporary Jewelry, and the Replication of Desire" Digital Meets Handmade: Jewelry in the 21st Century, Fashion Institute of Technology. May 2018. Read.
Paper modeled after a tabloid. Takeaway created for "Fake News and True Love: Fourteen Stories by Robert Baines" Created in collaboration with the artist, and Barbara Paris Gifford.
Publications
Much of the writing I have done has gone in tandem with exhibitions and has therefore been ephemeral. It has taken the form of wall texts, object labels, and pamphlets.
Further publications include those that are available only in print, only digitally, and those that are available in both formats. A list of them are below.
"A Scouring Wind: Kristin Beeler" Faculty Catalogue University of Oregon. 2022.
“Pixels Bejeweled: Modern Media, Contemporary Jewelry, and the Replication of Desire.” Digital Meets Handmade, Fashion Institute of Technology. SUNY Press, 2021
"Book review: Thinkingjewellery II" in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 41 No 4. 2021.
“Making mounts for Jewelry, ” in Metalsmith Tech Magazine. Vol 4 No 1. 2021.
“Anatomy of a Phoenix,” in (exh cat) 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now. eds Barbara Paris Gifford.
Museum of Arts and Design: New York, NY. 2021.
"Call to Action," in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 4. 2020.
“Crucible, Legacy, and Embodiment: MJ Tyson,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 3. 2020.
“Powder Atomization for 3D Printing: Steps Forward,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 3. 2020.
“DNA Jewelry,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 3. 2020.
“Face Jewelry: The Future and Identity,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 2. 2020.
“Unearthing Evolution: A Prehistoric Bracelet,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 2. 2020.
"Permanent Jewelry," in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 1. 2020.
“Inked Jewelry,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 40 No 1. 2020.
“In the Studio: Lin Cheung,” in Metalsmith Magazine. Vol 39 No 1 2019.
"Forget-me-not ring: Object of the Month, Bard Graduate Center Gallery. 2019. Read.
Interview with Anya Kivarkis. Craft, Art and Design Oral History Project, Bard Graduate Center, 2018.
“Jewelry Studies: A Trip to Amsterdam and London.” News, Bard Graduate Center Newsletter and Website. March 21, 2018. Read.
Contributor to http://telanafa.org/ (content and design), 2017.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Web Catalogue Object Description, 2017. Accession number 62.266.8.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Web Catalogue Object Description, 2017. Accession number 63.232.9.
“Objects Speak: Deciphering Moche Metalsmith’s Methods of Manufacture.” Cultures of Conservation Blog, Bard Graduate Center. October 3, 2017. Read.
Artist's contribution in Cast: Art and Objects Made Using Humanity's Most Transformational Process by Jen Townsend and Renée Zettle-Sterling.
One for the Future
I am honored to be part of New York City Jewelry Week's "One for the Future" initiative among such amazing artists and jewelry experts. One For The Future recognizes emerging talent in the jewelry industry and provides honorees exposure aimed at jump starting their careers. This year’s batch of selected participants is composed of students and recent grads who epitomize the passion and dedication of burgeoning professionals in the New York City jewelry scene. The One For The Future program features the work and presence of up-and-coming individuals in several NYC Jewelry Week events throughout the city in numerous capacities. Mentorship remains a powerful force in a craft tradition with a heritage of apprentice-master relationships. In that spirit, One For The Future affords its participants a formative opportunity to gain advice, inspiration, and confidence from experienced jewelers, designers, and curators. It reminds industry veterans of the enthusiasm that marked the beginning of their own careers and illustrates a path forward for eager young creatives. Visit the page here.
Society of North American Goldsmiths Emerging Curators Grant
I was the recipient of the Society of North American Goldsmith's 2017 Emerging Curators Grant. The Emerging Curators program offers grants to assist an emerging curator or curators in executing an exhibition focused on jewelry and/or metalwork. This grant was awarded to me for my proposed exhibition A View from the Jeweler's Bench: Ancient Treasures, Contemporary Statements. Find a description of the grant and my proposal on SNAG website here or an archive of the final exhibition on my Curatorial page.
Center for Craft Windgate Curatorial Internship
I was honored to be selected as the Windgate Curatorial intern at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2018.