There’s a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum.  It’s an international loan exhibition featuring luxury arts created in the Ancient Americas and it showcases more than 300 objects drawn from more than 50 museums in 12 countries.  Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas traces the development of  goldworking and other luxury arts from Peru to Mexico from around 1000BC to the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century. It emphasizes specific places and moments of artistic achievement, as well as the exchange of materials and ideas across time and place.  It presents a new understanding of ancient

American art and culture based on indigenous ideas of value and casts new light on the brilliance of ancient works of art from recent archaeological excavations that have rarely, if ever, left their country of origin.  The exhibit is certainly interesting but I’m awfully glad I live now and not in say, the 12th century,  if for no other reason than I’d hate to wear nose ornaments and pendants bigger than I am.  But do go—as I say, it is undeniably interesting.

Miriam Silverberg is a freelance journalist and owner of Miriam Silverberg Associates, a boutique publicity agency in Manhattan. She may be reached at silverbergm@mindspring.com