Mahnaz Collection mounted the exhibition Material Beauty: Modern Hopi, Navajo and Pueblo artist Jewelers at their 57th Street Gallery in New York, November 12, 2018 through December 4, 2018. The exhibit featured over 175 pieces of jewelry by makers who evolved historic new directions in southwestern Native American jewelry, beginning in the 1960s with the visionary Hopi artist Charles Loloma. These artists and silversmiths drew inspiration from multiple sources ranging from their own geographies, spirituality and traditions to distant artistic movements and concepts, creating influential designs of unique beauty and power. In materials long-used, such as silver and turquoise, as well as in an expansive panoply of newer materials such as gold, opal, black jade and zirconium, these master jewelers, women and men, expressed compelling ideas about the precious past and futures with meaning. Some made noteworthy shifts in Southwestern jewelry design while others, by revisiting older styles of workmanship, built reputations as traditionalists of the highest quality. Taken together, their contribution to world jewelry stands at the highest level.
The exhibition was accompanied by an original, researched and illustrated catalogue, available for purchase.
