IN FLUX

Overview

In the 1960s and 1970s, a generation of young Americans rejected the promise of prosperity and the suburban dream embraced by their parents. Furious about the war in Vietnam, fighting for civil rights at home, and eagerly exploring the effects of psychedelic drugs, the delights of free love, and the mystical teachings of eastern religions, thousands followed the advice to “turn on, tune in, drop out,” bringing about a counterculture in the process.
For many American jewelers, these events and values found their way into the studio, as well as affecting how they lived, worked, and loved. Jewelers, like other studio craftspeople, rode the wave of popularity for the hand-made and authentic that was at the heart of the counterculture. In Flux is the story of how their jewelry contributed to the raucous, contradictory, and enthusiastic clamor for a new kind of society that made the 1960s and 1970s so extraordinary.

In celebration of the publication, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture, NYC Jewelry Week is proud to present: Civil Rights and Body Politics. Join moderator Cindi Strauss (Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design at the MFA Houston) as she speaks to legendary jewelers and artists Joyce J. Scott and Harriete Estel Berman about their experiences as makers in the turbulent and politically exciting period of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Civil Rights and Body Politics was hosted by Art Jewelry Forum and Museum of Arts & Design, NYC Jewelry Week’s Official 2020 Museum Partner, during NYCJW 2020. Art Jewelry Forum is the Fiscal Sponsor of the book, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture.