Jewels by JAR was a special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that ran from 20 November 2013 to 9 March 2014. It was the first retrospective of the work of a contemporary jeweller ever staged by the Metropolitan and one of the very few occasions on which the museum had granted a solo show to a living designer in any decorative-arts medium. The exhibition consolidated the international standing of Joel Arthur Rosenthal's Paris maison JAR and brought a body of jewellery known previously through auction catalogues and a small specialist literature into broader public view.

Background

JAR had been founded by Rosenthal at 7 Place Vendôme in 1977. Through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s the maison built a reputation among collectors, curators and the international auction market while remaining, by deliberate choice, almost invisible to the broader jewellery-buying public. A small London exhibition at Somerset House in 2002 had been the only previous institutional treatment of JAR's work. The Metropolitan retrospective was therefore the principal moment at which the body of JAR jewellery was made available for public study and viewing in any quantity.

Scale and Curatorial Approach

The exhibition gathered more than four hundred pieces, drawn primarily from private collections, with substantial loans from JAR clients across Europe and North America. It was curated by the Metropolitan with Joel Rosenthal's close involvement and was installed under his particular direction in dim galleries with theatrical pin-spot lighting, an unusual arrangement for the museum and one that drew commentary in itself. The lighting was designed to render the jewellery as Rosenthal himself preferred it shown, with each pavé surface registering as a saturated colour against blackness and the metal substrate effectively invisible.

The pieces were organised thematically rather than chronologically, with sections devoted to flower studies, butterflies and other naturalia, geometric and abstract pieces, the maison's titanium work, ear clips and earrings, and rings. Wall labels and the catalogue carried minimal textual interpretation in keeping with Rosenthal's preference that the work speak for itself.

Reception

The exhibition drew very large attendance for a decorative-arts show of its scale and a wide spread of critical engagement. Reviews in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal commented on both the work itself and the unusual installation, with widely admiring assessments of the technical command and the colour gradations. Some criticism was directed at the dim lighting and at the absence of more interpretive material, but the exhibition was generally treated by mainstream and trade critics as a watershed for the institutional standing of contemporary fine jewellery.

Catalogue and Lasting Impact

The exhibition catalogue Jewels by JAR is the principal published reference on the maison's work and remains an essential primary source for collectors, auctioneers and gemmological researchers. The retrospective reset the auction market for JAR pieces in the years immediately following, with single-owner sales at Christie's and Sotheby's recording strong premiums for documented pieces with exhibition provenance. It also established a precedent for the institutional treatment of contemporary haute joaillerie that subsequent exhibitions, including the Hemmerle retrospectives at major institutions, have followed.