The Brooklyn Museum’s latest exhibition, Solid Gold, opens with a blast. Visitors are greeted by a five-minute video of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe rocketing into the sun’s atmosphere. It’s a bold start, one that gestures toward the celestial origins of gold itself while also hinting at the obsessive human ambition that has long accompanied it.

Curated by Matthew Yokobosky, Solid Gold, currently on view through July 6th, 2025, brings together over 500 objects, with roughly half drawn from the museum’s permanent collection. Spanning ancient civilizations, religious relics, industrial design, couture fashion, and contemporary art, the show takes a kaleidoscopic view of gold as both material and metaphor. It moves between reverence and critique, awe and irony, and excess and restraint.

The exhibition is divided into eight thematic sections, each exploring a different aspect of gold’s significance. In the early galleries, visitors encounter artifacts that date back thousands of years. A standout is the lid of a coffin from Egypt’s 22nd Dynasty, on view for the first time in over a century. Alongside it are intricate fly-shaped beads from Egypt circa 1539–1292 B.C.E. and a cache of gold ornaments from the fourth century B.C.E. Eastern Mediterranean. These objects aren’t just beautiful—they’re durable. Unlike many materials, gold doesn’t rust or corrode. It survives, often in new forms, after being melted down and reshaped.

From there, the narrative shifts forward in time but not necessarily in tone. Gold’s function as a symbol of status and power is picked up in a glittering display of contemporary fashion and jewelry. Gabby Elan’s golden grillz from the 2000s mark a cultural throughline between ancient adornment and modern expressions of prestige and identity.

Fashion occupies a central role in the show—not just as embellishment but as a lens through which to consider gold’s ties to wealth, celebrity, and spectacle. John Galliano’s Spring/Summer 2004 collection for Dior, inspired by Egyptomania and Elizabeth Taylor’s 1963 performance in Cleopatra, features heavily. Galliano’s ornate headdresses and metallic fabrics echo the grandeur of ancient royalty filtered through Hollywood fantasy.

The Blonds’ 2016 “Egyptian Disco” collection pushes that fantasy further, with designs dripping in sequins, lamé, crystals, and 24-karat chain piping. Their 2019–2020 “Mr. Blond” neck corset—an homage to Mr. T’s layered chains—adds a flash of irreverence, reimagining gold not as sacred but as swagger.

Designers such as Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Hubert de Givenchy, and Demna of Balenciaga also make appearances. Demna’s crinkled gold dress from Spring 2020 resembles a discarded candy wrapper—commentary, perhaps, on the thin line between luxury and waste. Anna Sui’s Fall/Winter 2007 ensemble, adorned with coin-like medallions and a chain-fob watch, suggests a blend of ornament and utility. Meanwhile, Azzedine Alaïa’s 1989 dress for Tina Turner and Paco Rabanne’s iconic chain-mail mini dress and cowl from the 1970s underline gold’s potential as both decoration and armor.

If fashion in Solid Gold dazzles, the exhibition’s engagement with gold’s darker legacy is more restrained but not absent. William Kentridge’s animated film Mine (1991) depicts the harsh realities of labor under apartheid-era gold mining in South Africa. The film contrasts the greed of white mine owners with the vulnerability of Black workers, challenging the myth of gold as merely beautiful.

Zadik Zadikian’s Path to Nine (2024) presents over 1,000 wooden blocks covered in gold leaf, stacked like bricks across the gallery. If they were solid gold, they would be worth a billion dollars. Instead, they form a gleaming wall—an obstacle rather than an offering. Together, Kentridge and Zadikian invite viewers to consider gold not just as a symbol of power, but also as a source of suffering and distortion.

Still, there are gaps. The exhibition gives only passing attention to how gold functions in the lives of ordinary people. In India, for example, gold is worn not just for beauty but as economic security. Jewelry passed down across generations serves as a financial safety net, especially for women. 

Religious uses of gold receive fuller treatment. In one gallery, a mid-18th-century Catholic vestment shimmers under low lighting. Woven from gold thread, it would have reflected candlelight during mass, imbuing the priest with a visual aura of divinity. Fourteenth-century Italian altarpieces gleam nearby, their gilded surfaces designed to glow in dim churches.

Titus Kaphar’s Jerome Project (2014) creates a compelling counterpoint. His portraits of incarcerated Black men—based on mugshots and outlined in gold leaf—hang beside Renaissance religious works. Each canvas is dipped in tar, with the level of submersion corresponding to the amount of time each man spent in prison. The result is both haunting and clear: these are contemporary icons whose humanity has been obscured by systems of punishment.

Agnes Martin’s Friendship (1963) offers another kind of reverence. One of only three paintings she created using gold leaf, the minimalist canvas hums quietly in a room otherwise filled with louder gestures. With its faint grid lines and red underpainting, it stands as a meditation on order, light, and restraint.

Not every piece lands. A 19th-century Rajasthani odhni, a wedding veil embroidered with gold thread, is draped over a black mannequin in a way that feels underthought. Presented without adequate cultural framing, it becomes decorative rather than meaningful. Marc Quinn’s Siren (2008), an 18-karat gold sculpture of Kate Moss contorted into a yoga pose, attempts to blend celebrity, sexuality, and spirituality—but instead lands as tone-deaf and shallow.

Other installations explore more recent ideas of gold’s symbolism. Gareth Pugh’s Fall/Winter 2011–12 designs, made of small, gold-tinted metallic tiles, evoke digital pixelation. The effect is futuristic, suggesting a link between precious metals and technology. A computer-generated reimagining of Japanese folding screens, teamLab’s Gold Waves (2017), continues this thread. The piece moves and pulses softly, blending tradition with innovation.

One section of the exhibition draws attention for a different reason: branding. Dior, one of the show’s corporate sponsors, is featured prominently throughout, culminating in a full section dedicated to the “J’adore” perfume campaign. A gold-leaf dollhouse replica of Dior’s original showroom in Paris—created by the brand’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri in collaboration with artist Peggy Slinger—is undeniably intricate, but its presence raises questions. At what point does a museum exhibition become an extended advertisement?

The final gallery leans into critique. Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Golden Venus of the Rags (1967) shows a radiant classical statue facing a mound of discarded clothes. The contrast between the polished and the thrown-away is stark. Claudio Cina’s silk ensemble, printed with classical imagery and referencing the over-the-top luxury of Hearst Castle, makes a similar point: gold doesn’t always elevate. Sometimes it obscures, or garishly decorates, or distracts.

By this stage in the exhibition, the volume of objects becomes part of the experience. Visitors are overloaded—by shine, by history, by contradiction. Gold is everywhere, and its meaning keeps shifting.

This is perhaps Solid Gold’s most honest gesture. It resists offering a final statement on what gold is or what it should be. Instead, it reflects gold’s multiplicity: sacred and profane, industrial and ceremonial, timeless and timely. It can be the glimmer on a Byzantine icon or the edge of a rapper’s smile. It can decorate a priest or fund a war. It can crown a king or hang from a teenager’s ear.

If there is one clear message, it may be this: gold endures not because it is pure, but because it is complicated.

This is perhaps Solid Gold’s most honest gesture. It resists offering a final statement on what gold is or what it should be. Instead, it reflects gold’s multiplicity: sacred and profane, industrial and ceremonial, timeless and timely. It can be the glimmer on a Byzantine icon or the edge of a rapper’s smile. It can decorate a priest or fund a war. It can crown a king or hang from a teenager’s ear.