Solid Gold: A Radiant Celebration at the Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum marks its 200th anniversary with Solid Gold, a dazzling exhibition running from November 16, 2024, to July 6, 2025. This immersive showcase explores gold's profound influence on art, culture, and society. Featuring over 500 works, the exhibition highlights masterpieces from the Museum’s collection alongside extraordinary international loans, blending ancient artifacts with contemporary masterpieces spanning millennia and continents.
Solid Gold unites a global array of treasures, bridging historical legacies with modern innovation: from ancient Egyptian funerary relics, Greco-Roman world artifacts and pre-Columbian ornaments to haute couture designs by Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, and The Blonds. Each piece is a testament to the extraordinary craftsmanship of goldsmiths around the world.
Gold, both as material and metaphor, has symbolized beauty, wealth, spirituality, and power for millennia, and inspired creativity across generations. While celebrating gold’s beauty, Solid Gold also confronts its darker history. The exhibition addresses the human and environmental toll of gold mining, using its platform to spark thoughtful conversations about exploitation and sustainability. Myths like El Dorado and Suvarnabhumi are explored, illustrating how gold has fueled both dreams and colonization throughout history.
The exhibition features striking works by renowned artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Alexander Calder iconic jewelry and Yves Klein radiant monochrome. One standout is Agnes Martin’s Friendship (1963), a masterpiece covered in gold leaves that reflects Martin’s meticulous grid style, drawing parallels with Renaissance gilding techniques and traditional Asian folding screens. By incising the gold surface with horizontal and vertical lines to reveal the red oil paint beneath, Martin juxtaposes the opulence of gold with mathematical precision.
Solid Gold, a deep dive into one of humanity’s most enduring obsessions!
At the Brooklyn Museum, from November 16, 2024, to July 6, 2025
