From Feb 18th until July 4th (sorry, you've probably missed it)the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (the NYC branch of the Smithsonian Institute) has had a large exhibit of jewelry by Van Cleef and Arpels (previously mentioned) entitled Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels. As I've tried once before, this will be a review of the exhibition which I was able to attend last weekend.
First of all, the collected works are fantastic, from the coronation jewels of Princess Grace through the many pieces commissioned by the Duchess of Wales to their current works, a massive cross-section of VC&A's work was on display, probably more then in any one place before. The exhibit itself was separated into 6 areas, each with a theme, a more sensible way to organize the jewels then by date or by material. The themes were somewhat vague to cover all the pieces, but useful conceptually: Inovation, Transformation, Nature, Exoticism, Fashion and Personalities (a catch-all for pieces owned by famous customers). These tied into various associated displays, including a video of the mystery setting in the innovation room, pre-production sketches in the Transformation room and photos of celebrities in the Personalities room. The entire exhibit was labeled by number, everyone got a guide book on entering which provided all relevant information, a much better solution then what would have been an excessive number of captions for the displays.
The display of the jewels was not all that satisfactory. The pieces were mostly set as a long row on a table, which made for moderately good traffic flow, but the cases were problematic. Some were single cases with the all the pieces, but most were smaller domes with a few pieces. These, for some baffling reason, appeared to be blown glass and were rife with irregularities that distorted the view of the pieces. The guards were also very insistent that one could not lean or even place the guide on the tables, which made getting a close look an excise in careful balance. The occasional nose-print testified to failures. There were also some baffling displays, like the illusionary ones based on parabolic mirrors that caused the piece to appear to float at the table surface, but also dimmed and distorted it due to the poor condition of the mirrors. As has become common with this sort of exhibit, photography was prohibited.
I don't wish these complaints to give the impression that I didn't enjoy it a great deal, it would have been worth the trip by itself, but such small changes could have made it much more enjoyable.
A
ps yes it is pathetic how overrun by spammers the website is, it looks like no care was taken to secure it at all, nor has anyone from the museum bothered to look at it since it was launched.
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