Robert Frost famously wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which is dedicated to the staying power of gilded treasures, makes the opposite case.
“Solid Gold,” which coincides with the museum’s 200th anniversary, opens tomorrow and features over 500 golden objects, including fashion, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, and more. (It runs until July 6, 2025.) “I based the exhibition checklist on our impressive permanent collection,” says Matthew Yokobosky, the museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture. “In reviewing our holdings, nearly 4,000 works are gold or have a gold aspect and span thousands of years, from ancient times to today.”
The museum had more than enough items to choose from in its vast collection—in fact, it was difficult to narrow down exactly which golden goods to focus on. “After reviewing most of them, I created a chronological selection of about 250 works and enriched it with loans of fashion, jewelry, and art to spark cross-disciplinary dialogues and juxtapositions,” says Yokobosky, who combined the old (the oldest item being a large sarcophagus lid from the 22nd Dynasty, which is on view for the first time in over a century) with the new, including garments such as a golden-foil gown from Balenciaga’s spring 2020 collection, designed by Demna.
While gold has been said to represent beauty, honor, success, and wealth, each of the 500-plus objects holds its own history and sentiments. The showcase is organized into eight different sections, where historical objects are juxtaposed against more contemporary fashions and visuals. Everything in the assortment is a visual feast for the eyes—from mid-14th-century tempera and tooled gold panels, to 19th-century Burmese Buddhas—but the golden fashions are especially striking. Among the highlights are splendid couture gowns from The Blonds, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy, Marc Bohan, Azzedine Alaïa, and John Galliano while he was at the helm of Christian Dior. (Galliano’s ancient-Egypt-themed couture collection for spring 2004 is also on view.)
The spellbinding jewels, meanwhile, are also sure to delight any gold lover: There is a rare prototype of a fly necklace made for Elizabeth Taylor to wear in the 1963 film Cleopatra, as well as a handful of shimmering Cartier jewels, including the luxurious 1970 Muslim Prayer Bead necklace made of twisted, polished, and gadrooned gold .
