SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Museum of Craft and Design announces Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech, an exhibition celebrating the creative scope and innovations of contemporary art jewelry, opening on October 4, 2025. Drawing from the renowned private collection of Susan Beech, this exhibition features over 80 pieces, offering visitors a rare glimpse into one of the most noteworthy contemporary art jewelry collections in the United States.
Wunderkammer takes its name and inspiration from 18th-century “cabinets of curiosity,” or wunderkammern, collections of objects designed to reflect both the wonder of the natural world and the intellect of their owners. Susan Beech’s collection is an eclectic mix of the beautiful, the bizarre, and the profound. From biblical snakes to gothic Victoriana, these works create new entry points for visitors to engage with contemporary art jewelry as adornment, storytelling, symbolism, and sculpture.
The exhibition showcases an extensive range of art jewelry makers and designers, many of whom have pioneered the world of contemporary art jewelry, like Gijs Bakker, Manfred Bischoff, and Marta Mattsson. It also aims to evaluate the wunderkammer in a contemporary context, subverting its connotation of world mastery and colonization. Beech’s collection offers a thoughtful reinterpretation, one that acknowledges the Wunderkammer’s complex history and instead celebrates global perspectives, showcasing artists from 20 different countries.
In an interview with Art Jewelry Forum, Beech comments, “I was on one of the first AJF trips to Seattle. In our trip packet, I saw an image of a large necklace by Nancy Worden adorning a partially naked man. The neckpiece consisted of quarters in which the word “swine” was cut out, with cast bronze Barbie doll arms holding pearls in their hands and the title Casting Swine before Pearls. I couldn’t get this image out of my mind. I went down to Traver Gallery and bought the piece on the spot. It didn’t matter if I would ever wear it. It was a wake-up call; jewelry didn’t need to have boundaries, and it didn’t even have to be wearable… Now I’m open to almost anything innovative, with an original voice and well made. I wear jewelry every day and love it.”1
Wunderkammer offers a rare and intimate look into Susan Beech’s personal collection, specifically, the pieces she has chosen to keep and wear herself. Today, much of Beech’s collection has been donated to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Arts and Design. Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech features only those she has held onto for her personal everyday adornment. Thus, the artwork in the exhibition offers a deeply personal perspective on the relationship between jewelry and identity, furthermore inviting visitors to consider how wearable art can reflect the self, carry history, and transform materials into vessels of meaning.
David Bielander’s eight-foot-long Python, crafted from titanium, is a single, continuous piece that can be worn in multiple configurations, draping like a garment or scarf that moves fluidly with the body. Its lifelike scale enhances both its visual impact and its evocative associations with temptation, sensuality, and the allure of the serpent. Similarly, Ted Noten’s work abandons conventional thoughts about jewelry, adding a whole new dimension to the craft. His designs act as a critique of contemporary life and challenge convention and the process of habituation, the familiar, and the unusual. Among Noten’s work are extraordinary bags in which he casts strange objects, such as Purse, which has a taxidermied back bird cast within it.
Susan Beech’s home is filled with custom display cases in a range of styles and purposes, all inspired by the tradition of 18th-century wunderkammern. Two of Beech’s custom cabinets will be featured in the exhibition, offering an intimate setting that deepens the connection between the viewer, the artwork, and the collector, providing the opportunity to peek in the drawers of the collector’s curiosity cabinet.
Wunderkammer: The Collection of Susan Beech is an invitation to explore the power of contemporary art jewelry. Through the lens of Susan Beech’s collection, the exhibition reveals how art jewelry is pushing the boundaries and conventions of wearability through bold materials, narratives, innovation, and expressive form.
1 Susan Beech, “Collector Susan Beech,” interview by Trish Rodimer and Susan Cummins, Art Jewelry Forum (June 6, 2009), https://artjewelryforum.org/articles/susan-beech/.
