The Eternal Power of Gold: Solid Gold at the Brooklyn Museum

“So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.”

Robert Frost’s famous words from his poem Nothing Gold Can Stay, gilded on a black wall, provide the last imagery in an exhibit that challenges his idea of gold being truly fleeting. For its 200th anniversary, the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibit “Solid Gold” is a testament to the enduring powers of gold, the versatility of its opulence, and the everlasting symbolism it possesses across various regions and eras. 

The exhibit—which opened in November and will run until July 6—features over 500 artifacts, roughly half of which are from the museum’s own archives; the others are loaned from various outside institutions. The vast collection includes pieces from runways as recent as 2020 and Egyptian tombs as old as 3000 years. These objects are connected by the presence of gold and the powerful messages that the precious metal can represent.

The showcase begins with a reading listing the various entities that gold symbolizes—opulence, joy, enlightenment—and referencing it as a form of communication. The exhibit quickly establishes that gold is mighty and meaningful, grouping artifacts based on common themes conveyed by the use of gold. “Fashioning Gold” and “Symmetry and Pattern,” for example, are among the eight categories. 

In the first room, a huge, domed space, stage lights cast yellow illuminations in crinkly patterns resembling gold leaf. Three extravagant Dior dresses stand elevated around a yellow-diamond necklace on a sleek podium. Two of the mannequins wear Egyptian-style headdresses, while the third reflects light off of geometric gold panels under a leopard-print stole. Although “Solid Gold” highlights a variety of artifacts and mediums, it is primarily a fashion exhibit, and the brilliance of the greeting pieces sets the stage for an ode to the ancient and a welcome to the modern.

Just behind the opening set, the first section, titled “Ancient Gold,” occupies the entire room and features some of the most incredible pieces of the exhibit. The section ties together the inspired and the inspiration, placing modern fashion influenced by ancient styles next to the historic pieces themselves. Elizabeth Taylor, as seen in Cleopatra (1963), is projected on a wall, casting a sultry gaze down at the lid of a 22nd-dynasty Egyptian sarcophagus, their eyes painted with gold and black. A Native American deity on a gold plaque from Panama bares his teeth next to the grillz of the American hip-hop artist Nelly, their teeth strikingly similar despite the years between them. The gold used in the ornamental Ancient Greek leaves is protected behind a plexiglass case, but it shines just as bright as the gold hanging from the chains of Tina Turner’s minidress. In this way, the Brooklyn Museum seamlessly fuses fashion styles despite differences in time periods.

The exhibit, like many from the Brooklyn Museum, is multi-sensory. Among classically displayed clothes and artifacts, dance scenes from the 70s disco era and a 1917 documentary shedding light on the toilsome gold mining process in South Africa are screened. In a display labeled “Wearing Coins,” the jingles of coins clanging against each other play on speakers overhead. These sensory details emphasize how vast gold is to our senses and how we can associate it with sounds, colors, and places. 

Another highly impressive section ties together pieces relating to the Florentine Renaissance, the inhumanity of the prison system, and the artistic use of cleaning rags. A painting by Italian artist Lorenzo Monaco from 1415-20 hangs in a heavy, ornamental wooden frame. The Virgin Mary and Child are graciously depicted sitting on the floor, earning the painting the name “The Madonna of Humility”—a humorous title considering that the garments, halos, and background are bathed in brilliant gold. Her slightly suspicious eyes lock with the set on the opposite wall, belonging to a member of The Jerome Project (My Loss). Artist Titus Kaphar gave this name to a project of over a hundred paintings he created, two of which are featured in “Solid Gold.” Kaphar painted the mugshots of incarcerated men who had his father’s last name, Jerome, and called upon Byzantine iconography of sainthood to give them auric backgrounds. He then covered their portraits with tar, with its height on the canvas representing the percentage of their lives they spent incarcerated. The intensity of the tar, speckled with gold leaf, removes the mugshots from their criminal context. In the next room, a golden statue of Venus turns her back to the viewer as she leans her hips into a pile of rags higher than her own head. The artist, Michelangelo Pistoletto, headed the Arte Povera movement of the late 60s and 70s with pieces like Venere degli stracci dorata (or “Golden Venus of the Rags”) to prove that art could be inexpensive. As vastly incoherent as these three pieces may seem, their section, titled “Money and Art,” recounts the importance of gold in the religious imagery of 14- and 15-century Italian artwork, generating a lasting association between gold as divinity and purity. Between the pieces, gold is used in impressions of spirituality to portray a message about humanity.

The greatest aspect of “Solid Gold” is the clarity of the curatorial vision. Outside of being aesthetically gorgeous, the exhibit links already incredibly thoughtful and deep-rooted pieces to the meaning of gold as a worldwide cultural symbol. The Brooklyn Museum makes a point to showcase the lavish displays of riches so many cultures have provided, as well as to spotlight how personal gold can be for the stories of movements like hip-hop and the legacies of power. The exhibition asks viewers to truly consider gold as not only an ornamental touch on artwork, but as a factor that has shaped cultures all over the globe and branded powerful associations to it in our minds.