Next month, New York’s American Museum of Natural History’s aptly named exhibit “Gold” will offer a comprehensive review of how different cultures have used the lustrous, malleable element and will feature artifacts that stretch from ancient times to modernity. Their common thread? Rank and privilege. “Societies that used gold as ornamentation, money … were societies that had social stratification,” says Charles Spencer, chairman of the museum’s anthropology division. “Even in our own culture, that’s how gold operates … I think that may be the draw.”
A draw indeed. At the Field Museum in Chicago, a largely golden collection of King Tut artifacts has sold nearly 800,000 tickets since May. The display is expected to draw 1 million viewers before it closes Jan. 1–triple the typical number for a seven-month exhibit there.
At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., a display of African gold has also seen hefty attendance, organizers say. “There’s status, there’s prestige, there’s the notion of wealth–people like gold,” says Andrea Nicolls, the coordinating curator of the exhibit, which is on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, until Nov. 26.
Even absent the valuable material, the mere concept of gold is enough to make a powerful statement. In Queens, N.Y., the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center’s new show, “The Gold Standard,” contains gold-themed art in a variety of media that explore the metal as a political, economic and esthetic phenomenon. Though many pieces are only gold-colored, the themes of wealth, power–and at times, excess–still come to the fore. “There is a real self-consciousness about the kind of power [the United States] has, and there’s a real interest in examining that,” says Walead Beshty, co-curator of the show, which opens Oct. 29.
Millenniums after it was first utilized by people, fascination with “the color” (as Gold Rush miners called it) persists. But what has endowed gold with such importance? Ironically, experts say, we have. “What gives gold value is culture,” Spencer says. “Gold is not inherently valuable.”
