Put a ring on it: NOMA hosts innovative jewelry show
Vania Ruiz, ‘Phototropist,’ from the Domestic Wildness series, 2019. Resin, fabric, ink, varnish. Collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, gift of Susan Grant Lewin.
NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) is now hosting Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, an exhibition presenting 100 innovative rings by designers who have reinvented this enduring jewelry form with a distinctly contemporary sense of experimental craft. It will remain on view through February 4, 2024, in the Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation Gallery on NOMA’s second floor.
The exhibition travels to NOMA from the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, and the artworks on view highlight the vision of Susan Grant Lewin, one of the most influential collectors of 20th- and 21st-century art jewelry.
Agustina Ros, ‘Pink is Gold,’ from the Gold Reflection series, 2018. Blown borosilicate glass, gold. Collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, gift of Susan Grant Lewin. Image courtesy of NOMA
The oldest-known example of a finger ring dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and for centuries, rings represented a way for their wearers to display wealth and status through luxurious materials. The Lewin collection on view in Ring Redux tells the story of the emergence of art jewelry in the postwar era, when innovative designers began to create objects that were neither traditionally made luxury goods nor low-cost, mass-produced costume jewelry.
Jiro Kamata, ‘Sunny Ring,’ 2005. Sunglass lenses, gold. Collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, gift of Susan Grant Lewin. Image courtesy of NOMA
Crossing the line between jewelry and sculpture, the 90 international artists represented in Ring Redux show exceptional use of both traditional and unconventional materials — ranging from gold, diamonds and pearls to found sunglass lenses and goat hair. The exhibition includes improvisations on the ring form, and the artworks — dating from the 1950s to the present — are arranged around themes such as texture, geometry and color.
Ariel Lavian, ‘No. 2 (Full Hansen Disease—Deformation as an Object series),’ 2016. Copper, various patinas. Collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, gift of Susan Grant Lewin. Image courtesy of NOMA
“Visitors will be amazed and surprised by the way these rings challenge notions of design and form,” said Laura Ochoa Rincon, NOMA’s decorative arts trust curatorial fellow. “All of the designers in Ring Redux use inventive techniques to redefine what a ring is. Through these innovative formats, notions of connection, love, and longevity are all explored.”
Visit the website of the New Orleans Museum of Art and see its dedicated page for Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection.
