Boys get skulls, girls get butterflies. Jewellery at the MAKK

The exhibition “Boys get skulls, girls get butterflies” brings together jewellery from prehistoric times to Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Baroque to the present day from the jewellery collection of the Museum of Applied Art in Cologne with rare and exemplary pieces by the goldsmith-artist Georg Hornemann. Pieces of jewellery are tracked down from birth till death and juxtaposed in the context of themes such as mysticism and power, love and sentimentality, ostentation and splendour or function and motif. For a limited time the pieces of jewellery leave their places in the chronology of art history and combine to form a theme-based presentation. The exhibition documents the constant interplay of continuity and change, tradition and innovation, consistency and occasionally unwilling evolution.