Jewelry Fans Are Going Wild over This Dazzling Exhibition of Ultra-Rare Van Cleef & Arpels
Green is a color that rarely goes out of style. From that warm shade of sage on your bedroom wall to neon pea-soup stains on Father Karras’s cassock in The Exorcist, it’s a versatile color of depth, mystery, and strength. Hell...Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius even compared himself to an emerald in Meditations. Nowhere is all that more evident than in “Garden of Green,” a new exhibition opening at the American Museum of Natural History on June 10, that comprises 44 exquisite jewelry pieces of stones including peridot, emerald, and malachite from the archives of Van Cleef & Arpels.
On display in the Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery, an intimate space inside the newly renovated Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, the pieces—32 of which have never been exhibited in the United States—run a vast gamut from zodiac-themed pendants in malachite to a leafy bracelet of green chalcedony to an ornate emerald and diamond necklace and bracelet set commissioned by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV for his wife in 1971.
“We hope that, with their curiosity piqued, our visitors will explore further, said the museum’s president Sean M. Decatur in a press release, “and enjoy learning about the physical properties of gems and minerals, their intriguing qualities, and what they tell us about our planet and its history.”
Nicolas Bos, Van Cleef & Arpels’s president and CEO, added: “It has been stimulating to curate significant pieces of very high quality around this striking theme—the color green—which can speak to all visitors, curious and connoisseurs alike.”
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