The Brooklyn Museum’s New Exhibition Is a Gold Lover’s Fever Dream

Robert Frost famously wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which is dedicated to the staying power of gilded treasures, makes the opposite case.

“Solid Gold,” which coincides with the museum’s 200th anniversary, opens tomorrow and features over 500 golden objects, including fashion, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, and more. (It runs until July 6, 2025.) “I based the exhibition checklist on our impressive permanent collection,” says Matthew Yokobosky, the museum’s senior curator of fashion and material culture. “In reviewing our holdings, nearly 4,000 works are gold or have a gold aspect and span thousands of years, from ancient times to today.”

The museum had more than enough items to choose from in its vast collection—in fact, it was difficult to narrow down exactly which golden goods to focus on. “After reviewing most of them, I created a chronological selection of about 250 works and enriched it with loans of fashion, jewelry, and art to spark cross-disciplinary dialogues and juxtapositions,” says Yokobosky, who combined the old (the oldest item being a large sarcophagus lid from the 22nd Dynasty, which is on view for the first time in over a century) with the new, including garments such as a golden-foil gown from Balenciaga’s spring 2020 collection, designed by Demna.