Jewel Stern

Independent Scholar
Co-Curator, “Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design”

Jewel Stern, an independent scholar and collector of American silver, is responsible for creating the most important collection of 20th-century American silver in existence: The Jewel Stern American Silver Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

Assembled over two decades, the collection consists of more than 400 pieces of industrially produced American silver dating from 1925 to 2000. It is not only of exceptional aesthetic quality but contains examples by virtually every important silver designer working in this period, including works by major manufacturers of the 20th century such as Tiffany, Gorham, and Reed & Barton, as well as by designers Erik Magnussen, Elsa Tennhardt, Eliel Saarinen, Robert E. Locher, Belle Kogan, Kurt Eric Christoffersen, Richard Meier, Robert A. M. Stern, and others. The collection was acquired by the Museum in 2002.

Ms. Stern has built a reputation of expertise in American decorative arts through independent study, lecturing, and consultation. Through her extensive research on the history of 20th-century silver design, she has amassed an unparalleled archive that will come to the Dallas Museum of Art.

In 1995, she served as a guest curator for Craft in the Machine Age, organized by the American Craft Museum, New York; and in 1986 she was guest curator for Miami Color: Photo-essays of Miami and Miami Beach, organized by the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach. She is a guest curator for the forthcoming exhibition on the architect Ely Jacques Kahn at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, and the coauthor of Ely Jacques Kahn, Architect: Beaux-Arts to Modernism in New York (2006). Currently, Ms. Stern is serving as co-curator for the national touring exhibition Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design, organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. She is also the author of the exhibition catalogue edited by co-curators Kevin W. Tucker and Charles L. Venable. The catalogue is the first major scholarly undertaking to explore the scope of modernist design in 20th-century American silver.

Ms. Stern has been a guest lecturer for the New York University Conferences: Sterling Modernities: International and American Silver from the Arts and Crafts Movement to the Present and Glistening Transmissions of Style: American Silver and International Influence, as well as for the Bard Center for Graduate Studies in the Decorative Arts in New York City, the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables, Florida, and the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Ms. Stern served as a decorative arts consultant for The Wolfsonian Foundation in Miami Beach, Florida, and is the recipient of a 2002 fine arts grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies. She also received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida Fine Arts Council.

Ms. Stern, a native of Florida, holds a master’s degree from the University of Miami.