When Matthew Yokobosky saw French pop star Aya Nakamura sashay down a rain-slicked Pont des Arts in a gold Dior Haute Couture minidress at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics last summer, he knew he had to have the dress for his upcoming Brooklyn Museum exhibition.
Never mind that the 500 objects for “Solid Gold,” the museum’s marquee 200th anniversary show opening Saturday, were all but finalized by the time Nakamura, the most popular Francophone musician in the world, dazzled a global audience with a mash-up of her hits “Pookie” and “Djadja” accompanied by the musicians of France’s Republican Guard.
The custom frock was designed for the French Malian singer by Dior creative director of women’s collections Maria Grazia Chiuri, and features hundreds of feathers painted gold and painstakingly hand-embroidered by Lemarié artisans.
“It’s one thing to see [the dress] on TV,” Yokobosky tells WWD. “But when it arrived and we opened the crate, and saw all of these golden rooster feathers, everyone gasped. It’s thrilling when you see one of these garments up close, the fabrics, the techniques used to construct them. People want to have those feelings.”
As a theme for a museum show, gold is a very broad and somewhat amorphous topic. But its commemorative connotations aligned with the museum’s bicentennial, and its expansive range touched literally every era of human history in form, style and application from ancient Egyptian sarcophagi to the glittery gowns that designer John Galliano sent down the 2024 spring haute couture runway. “Solid Gold” includes 250 objects from the museum’s archives and another 250 on loan.
The exhibit is organized in nine distinct sections that examine various aspects of gold throughout history and culture ranging from Ancient Gold to Fashioning Gold to Crowned: From Egyptian Queens to Hip-Hop Kings. Marc Quinn’s Siren (Kate Moss) — a striking life-size sculpture made of solid 18-karat gold and depicting the fashion model in an anatomically impossible yoga pose, and on view in the U.S. for the first time — is grouped with Nam June Paik’s 2005 video installation Golden Buddha in the Ancient Gold galleries. And vintage Cartier cigarette cases share space with 6th century C.E. earrings in the Fashioning Gold space. In the Crowned section, a circa 120 to 130 C.E. wood Egyptian mummy portrait is juxtaposed with photographer Barron Claiborne’s iconic 1997 “King of New York” portrait of rapper Notorious B.I.G. sporting a $6 plastic crown.
“I really tried to make each section feel like its own distinct experience,” says Yokobosky, the museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture. “I wanted it to be like a movie, where you kind of have a scene and then you go to another scene. And like in a movie, you’re trying to create those interrelationships.”
“Solid Gold” includes a surfeit of rarely seen pieces from the museum’s archives, including a large sarcophagus lid from Dynasty 22 (945 to 740 B.C.E.), which has not been on display in more than a century and the Lunar Moth baby grand piano, restored and on public view for the first time since its creation by photographer and painter Edward Steichen in 1928. It is one of only two Steichen-designed pianos known to exist, which were featured in his portraits of luminaries including George Gershwin.
Constructed of mahogany inlaid with gilded bands and mirrored tesserae, it has been painstakingly restored by the museum’s conservation team. There are also more than 180 gold pieces from the Hellenistic period, as well as ancient jewelry and chain mail that span three millennia across Egypt, the Mediterranean coast, and the pre-Hispanic Americas.
Yokobosky has used contemporary fashion and jewelry as a unifying touchstone for “Solid Gold.”
“When I started working on the show, I made a list of all the designers that have done beautiful gold work,” he says. “And then I started to build tableaus of different groupings of works that talk to each other and had a sympathetic aesthetic.”
The work of Mary McFadden, and David and Phillippe (including shoes designed for The Blonds by Christian Louboutin) are featured heavily in the exhibit.
“I was very interested in looking at different techniques that were used in gold fashion,” says Yokobosky. “For instance, Mary McFadden did a collection where she had the chiffon painted with gold paint.”
There are multiple gowns from French designer Marc Bohan of Dior that are made from silk and steel thread, including a gold lamé Grecian gown worn by Lauren Hutton in director Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s 1982 feature film “All Fired Up.” There is also Tina Turner’s gold pearl bustier dress made for her in 1989 by Azzedine Alaïa, jewelry designer Gabby Elan’s gold and diamond tooth grills, a series of gold-embellished coats from Anna Sui, Italian-born American designer Giorgio di Saint’Angelo’s 1969 Klimt dress from the private couture collection of editor Hamish Bowles, two 1930s gold-plated metal purses from Elsa Schiaparelli polyurethane and leather gowns created by Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré, a dramatic golden ballroom dress constructed of crinkled gold metalized polyester from Balenciaga designer Demna’s spring 2020 haute couture collection, and Chiuri’s 2018 J’Adore dress worn by Charlize Theron; made of 100 percent polyamide and hand-embroidered with thousands of sequins.
“Various studies have been done about how museum-goers don’t read all the labels and didactic panels. And while those panels have a lot of information that could help them experience the work, people are selective about what they want to read about. I think part of curating and designing the show is to really create opportunities for a visual learning experience,” says Yokobosky.
“I think people come to museums because they want to have that non-verbal experience. I have really been thinking about the lighting and about a soundtrack that helps connect and bridge the different scenes. I’ve been working with the sound designer to create what I like to call a sound net, which is also something that’s helping us knit together the scenes. I’m really trying to create an experience for people that’s both a visual experience and the opportunity for learning.”
