Exhibition
Time, Nature, Love
Around 280 jewelry creations, watches, precious objects produced since the Maison was founded in 1906, are gathered for the occasion. More than 90 original archive documents, such as sketches and gouache designs, stand alongside these precious pieces from the Van Cleef & Arpels Collection, as well as loans from private owners.
Curated by Alba Cappellieri, Professor of Jewelry Design at Milan Polytechnic University and President of the Milano Fashion Institute, the exhibition revolves around three sections: Time, Nature and Love. In a decor created by architect-designer Johanna Grawunder, the exhibition demonstrates how Van Cleef & Arpels represents a fragmented age like the 20th century, embodying at once the timeless value of beauty and fleeting power of enchantment.
Alba Cappellieri
Alba Cappellieri is Full Professor of Jewelry Design and Fashion Accessories at the Milan Polytechnic University, where she is the Director of the International Master in Fashion Accessories Design.
She is also President of the Milano Fashion Institute (consortium of Bocconi, Politecnico and Cattolica universities). She is a member of the Scientific Committee of L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris and of the Fondazione Cologni in Milan. From 2013 to 2016, she taught Design-Driven Innovation at Stanford University. In 2017, she was appointed Ambassador of the Italian Design in Osaka and in 2018 in Sydney.
From 2014 to 2021, she was the Director of the Jewelry Museum in Vicenza, the only Italian museum exclusively dedicated to jewelry.
Johanna Grawunder
Architect-designer Johanna Grawunder works on a broad range of projects, from large-scale public lighting and color installations, architectural interventions and interiors, to limited-edition furniture and light collections for Carpenters Workshop Gallery in the United States and Europe. Trained as an architect, she was drawn to the medium of light early on and has incorporated architectural principles and scale, non-precious building materials and high technology light research into her designs. Her work is included in many museum permanent collections, including the SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and MAD in Paris.