Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection

Ring Redux presents more than a hundred avant-garde rings by renowned international artists who explore this age-old jewelry form with great vitality and relevance to society today. In the essay "Riffs on Rings", Ursula Ilse-Neuman provides valuable insights into the astonishing variations on one of the most intimate and enduring forms of body adornment, revealing the profound and subtle differences in how these artists evoke the ring’s potential to express ideas that extend beyond its ornamental role. The skill and audacity infused in these intimate sculptural forms is captured in stunning new color photographs. In the "Artists’ Voices" section, the jewelers provide valuable perspectives on the conception and execution of their works. The collection of rings presented here has been acquired over five decades by Susan Grant Lewin and will be exhibited at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia.

Ursula IsleIlse-Neuman is a curator, author, and lecturer specializing in contemporary art jewelry. She is Curator Emerita at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, where, as curator from 1992 to 2015, she organized more than forty exhibitions. Her projects include Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection as guest curator at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York (2017); Multiple Exposures: Jewelry and Photography (2014); Light, Space, Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta (2012); Inspired Jewelry: From the Museum of Arts and Design (2009); GlassWear: Glass in Contemporary Jewelry (2007); and Zero Karat: The Donna Schneier Gift to the American Craft Museum (2002). She has been a juror for national and international exhibitions including Sonderschau Schmuck, Munich, Germany, and the International Jewelry Expo, Shanghai, China, and was curator of the Contemporary American Jewelry section in the World Craft Council's Abhushan exhibition in New Delhi, India.

Paula Wallace founded SCAD in Savannah, Georgia, in 1978. As president, she has grown SCAD into the most comprehensive art and design university in the world, with locations on two continents and more than a hundred highly specialized graduate and undergraduate degree programs for tomorrow's entrepreneurs, inventors, makers, storytellers, and world-changers. A lifelong champion of artistic inclusion and creative expression, Wallace conceived of and led the establishment of the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah and the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta. The French Embassy of the United States of America has appointed Wallace a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, and she serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.

SUSAN GRANT LEWINSusan Grant Lewin served as Design Editor of Home Furnishings Daily and Senior Editor/Architecture & Design at House Beautiful magazine. As Global Creative Director of Formica Corp., Lewin created museum exhibitions commissioning leading architects and designers, as well as up and comers, to utilize the plastic laminate in their work. This is documented in her book, Formica & Design: From Countertop to High Art (1991). She then founded her own public relations firm, Susan Grant Lewin Associates, representing leading designers, artists, and architects. On her travels, Lewin became passionate about collecting art jewelry. Her book One of a Kind: American Art Jewelry Today (1994) is still the go-to book on contemporary American jewelry. In 2017, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum exhibited Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection.

Sarah Davis is an editor, author, and jewelry historian. She was the author of Anna Hu: Symphony of Jewels: Opus 2 (2019) and editor and a co-author of Jeweled Splendors of the Art Deco Era: The Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan Collection (2017). Davis was an art book editor at The Vendome Press for a decade before entering the world of luxury jewelry. She has been Director of Communications at Siegelson, New York, since 2012, where she has handled some of the most important fine jewelry in the world and has worked with museums including The Newark Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on important jewelry acquisitions. Davis is also the newsletter editor for the American Society of Jewelry Historians.

Adam Grinovich earned a BFA and MFA in jewelry and metalsmithing. Following his studies, he assisted in the studios of prominent artists and designers such as Christoph Zellwegger in Zurich, Switzerland, and Ted Noten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Grinovich's work has been presented extensively in international exhibitions. In addition to his independent studio career, he is a founding member of the experimental jewelry collective A5, a member of the design collective Critical +, the founder and head designer of the jewelry company KIOSK, and a professor of jewelry at SCAD. Grinovich's 2015 Double Ring is in the Susan Lewin Grant Collection.

Selected artists include: Claire Falkenstein and Arline Fisch (USA); Wendy Ramshaw (UK); Bruno Martinazzi, Giampaolo Babetto, and Annamaria Zanella (Italy); Friedrich Becker, Karl Fritsch, and Daniel Kruger (Germany); and David Bielander (Switzerland).