Talk

Art and Craft Lectures: Jan Walgrave

Why do we wear jewels? How did it start?

Everywhere in the world people have jewels for the same reasons – love, distinction, status, power, religion, superstition etc. – but of course the jewels are very different from culture to culture. We will have a walk through the western jewellery and from certain developing communities, before having a look at work from some contemporary artists.

Jan Walgrave (born 1937). Studies history and art history at Leuven University. From 1971 to 2001 he served as director of the four museums at the province of Antwerp: The Sterckshof castle specialized in artifacts, especially silverworks, the Diamond Museum, The Photo Museum and the Mode Museum, now he is retired.

Jan Walgrave made exhibitions about historical diamond jewels, about the symbolism of jewels with examples from all over the world, about the jewel art of the 20th century. I took over the groundbreaking exhibition "Jewelery Redefined" of the Crafts Council in London in The Sterckshof Museum.

For 10 years was an art critic for the newspaper De Standaard, the most important cultural newspaper of Flemish part from Belgium. Now he still involved in the organization of the exhibition "A Glorious Desire", with many old diamond jewels, in the MAS Museum and in the preparation of the DIVA, a new Museum of the Province Antwerpen, that will bring together the collections of silver and diamond in one museum.

Art and Craft Lectures
Welcome to this new series of cross-disciplinary lectures at the Art and Craft department. This lecture series highlights the breadth and depth of the art practices that the Art and Craft department encompasses. Each lecture will feature current issues pertaining to and spanning the five areas: Art and Public Space, Textile, Ceramics, Print and Drawing, Metal- and Jewellery Art.