NEW ORLEANS, LA.- This Friday, May 5, the New Orleans Museum of Art opens a new exhibition, Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection, presenting 100 innovative rings by designers who have reinvented this enduring jewelry form with a distinctly contemporary sense of experimental craft.

The exhibition travels to NOMA from the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, and the artworks on view highlight the vision of Susan Grant Lewin, one of the most influential collectors of 20th- and 21st-century art jewelry.

“This exhibition spotlights designers who use their craft to engage with the same important concepts as artists working in other media,” said Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of NOMA. “We’re pleased to partner with the SCAD Museum of Art on this exhibition, which complements NOMA’s renowned collections of art and design.”

The oldest known example of a finger ring dates back to ancient Mesopotamia, and for centuries rings represented a way for their wearers to display wealth and status through luxurious materials. The Lewin Collection on view in Ring Redux tells the story of the emergence of art jewelry in the postwar era, when innovative designers began to create objects that were neither traditionally made luxury goods nor low-cost, mass-produced costume jewelry.

Crossing the line between jewelry and sculpture, the 90 international artists represented in Ring Redux show exceptional use of both traditional and unconventional materials—ranging from gold, diamonds, and pearls to found sunglass lenses and goat hair. The exhibition includes improvisations on the ring form, and the artworks—dating from the 1950s to the present—are arranged around themes such as texture, geometry, and color.

“Visitors will be amazed and surprised by the way these rings challenge notions of design and form,” said Laura Ochoa Rincon, NOMA’s Decorative Arts Trust Curatorial Fellow. “All of the designers in Ring Redux use inventive techniques to redefine what a ring is. Through these innovative formats, notions of connection, love, and longevity are all explored.”

Highlights from the exhibition include:

• A two-finger Lamellae ring by groundbreaking Pritzker Prize–winning architect Zaha Hadid, based on her design for the Wangjing Soho skyscrapers in Beijing.

• Video art by Esther Brinkmann that the artist describes as “a slow ballet of hands putting on and taking off rings,” exploring the intimate relationship of jewelry to the body.

• A colorful ring made from resin and fabric flowers from Vania Ruiz’s Domestic Wildness series—an ongoing exploration of the designer’s Chilean cultural identity.

• A gold ring made by David Bielander that belies its luxurious material by appearing in the form of a simple piece of cardboard with a staple to its side.

Ring Redux is on view through February 4, 2024, in the Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation Gallery on NOMA’s second floor.

A full-color exhibition catalogue published by arnoldsche Art Publishers in collaboration with SCAD Museum of Art is available for purchase from the NOMA Museum Shop.