Hong Kong Palace Museum | Treasures of Global Jewellery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Body Transformed

8100. Exhibition introduction

Jewellery is the world's oldest art form, predating cave paintings by tens of thousands of years. Throughout history and across cultures, it has served to extend and amplify the human body, accentuating, enhancing, distorting, and transforming. Traversing time and place, this exhibition explores what jewellery is, why we wear it, and how it activates the body it adorns—probing in the process a fundamental aspect of what it is to be human.

Unfolding a series of remarkable stories from a global history of jewellery, the exhibition features approximately 200 masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, spanning five continents and nearly 4,000 years from the second millennium BCE to the 21st century. Organised in five thematic sections, the exhibition traces the development of adornments from ancient civilisations to cutting-edge contemporary creations. Each section explores a distinct dimension of bodily adornment, offering insights into both the wearers and the cultures that shaped these diverse, yet related, works of art. These groupings of objects are clustered together to stimulate comparative thinking about these works of art across times and cultures.

The exhibition is jointly organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Hong Kong Palace Museum. Additional works on display are from the Hong Kong Palace Museum's Mengdiexuan Collection, the Chris Hall Collection at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, and the ILLUMINATA Collection. Cathay and American Express are the Major Sponsors of the exhibition. Mr Alan Chan provided artistic direction for the exhibition's graphic design. The performance footage is provided by Hong Kong Ballet.

8101. Brooch

This brooch is an iconic design by Raymond Yard, a leading New York jeweller. Yard created a series of rabbit waiters carrying wine glasses and bottles as a playful nod to the Prohibition era (1920-1933), when the manufacture and consumption of alcohol was banned across America. Designs like this appealed to his affluent patrons who still enjoy alcohol during this time.

8102. Colombian gold

Centuries before the myth of El Dorado fuelled Spanish passions for a legendary city of gold, the Calima people in the Cauca Valley of Colombia practised a ritual in which their leaders' bodies were virtually enveloped in gold jewellery. Gold was considered a divine substance, linked to the sun and its power. The human face revealed and concealed was a favourite motif. Head, chest, and arm ornaments might feature a face rendered in high relief, its features partially obscured by a nose ornament—itself embossed with eyes and a mouth—and by two large discs suspended from earspools. Elaborate jewellery may have allowed the wearer to assume powerful new identities: projections on a headdress for instance, probably emulate feathers. Pendants augmented the overall effect, producing a delicate sound and sparkling reflections as the wearer moved.

8103. Tiara with oak leaves and acorns (transformable into three brooches)

This tiara can be transformed into three brooches, each shaped as an English oak-leaf spray. In Britain, the English oak signified national strength and steadfast loyalty. King Charles II (r. 1660-1685) is said to have hidden in an oak tree from the searching eyes of the enemies following the Battle of Worcester in 1651 during the English Civil War. In jewelled form, the oak spray later becomes a wearable declaration of patriotism and authority. A tiara with a similar patriotic motif was worn by the Duchess of Kent and Strathearn (1786-1861), the mother of Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901), at the wedding of Princess Augusta Carolina to the Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in 1843, and later by the Duchess of Argyll (1824-1878) at Buckingham Palace to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday in 1849.

8104. Jewellery set

This African-inspired choker-and-bracelet set works antiqued-finish tubular chains into commanding, collar-like forms. During his tenure as the creative director of Dior, John Galliano infused a radical, theatrical energy into this fashion house, with daring historical mashups and unexpected inspirations.