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

Description

“Treasures of Global Jewellery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Body Transformed” is jointly organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York and the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM). It marks the Met’s debut in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, and the first major travelling exhibition of its encyclopaedic global jewellery collection in Asia. Featuring around 200 dazzling and iconic masterpieces of jewellery, it is the first major exhibition in Hong Kong dedicated to the sweeping narratives of jewellery and other human adornment, covering five continents and nearly 4,000 years from the second millennium BCE to the 21st century. All exhibits drawn from the Met’s collection will be displayed alongside important works from the Hong Kong Palace Museum’s Mengdiexuan Collection and the Chris Hall Collection at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, as well as a major loan from the Illuminata Collection. Together, these works trace the development of adornments from ancient civilisations to cutting-edge contemporary creations, celebrating jewellery as a powerful medium for artistic and cultural expression.

The exhibition is presented in five thematic sections: “The Divine Body”, “The Regal Body”, “The Transcendent Body”, “The Alluring Body”, and “The Resplendent Body”. Each section illuminates a distinct dimension of adornment, inviting visitors to marvel at the manifold ways humans have embellished themselves from head to toe as an expression of belief, status, and aesthetic ideals across cultures and geographies.

Through this exhibition, the Hong Kong Palace Museum aims to celebrate creativity and cultivate cross-cultural dialogue that underscores the universality of jewellery, reflecting its commitment to bridging cilvilisations and connecting the past with the present.

The exhibition is jointly organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York and the Hong Kong Palace Museum, Cathay and American Express are the Major Sponsors of the exhibition.