Cartier Unveils a Hit Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art

After feeling like the world shrank to the size of a laptop screen for the past two-plus years, there exists a very real desire to be around tangible objects—especially when they happen to be really big jewels. So when “Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity” made its North American debut—and sole North American stop—at the Dallas Museum of Art last weekend after garnering rave reviews at Paris’s Musée Arts Decoratifs in November, the timing was perfect.

What’s on view there now: over 400 objects, including iconic Cartier pieces (some never before exhibited publicly) and works of Islamic art from local and international collections. The idea, DMA co-curator Sarah Schleuning said, was to interrogate how ideas move across cultures through trade, travel, trends, and “what it means to be inspired.” It works, elegantly juxtaposing Cartier designs with the influences of Louis J. Cartier—a renowned collector of Persian and Indian paintings, manuscripts, and other objects—and his younger brother Jacques, a frequent traveler to India and Bahrain.

Cartier, which was founded in 1847, was the first jewelry house to create an archive department in 1973, and began collecting their own antique designs ten years later. In 2003, the heritage department was built, in part to open Cartier’s doors to visiting curators as the house has maintained a strict edict that they never curate their own museum shows. “Only an external eye can be at the origin of the show at a public exhibition,” Cartier’s image and heritage director Pierre Raniero said during a press preview. The Dallas Museum of Art, with its dedication to cross-cultural programming and scholarship led by Dr. Agustin Arteaga, the Eugene McDermott director, had just the eyes—and, thanks to a 15-year loan of the Keir Collection, one of the foremost collections of Islamic art in the country—that the French house needed. Arteaga’s six-year tenure at the DMA has been marked by its string of hits “that fused popular appeal with diverse perspectives: Christian Dior’s fashion, Van Gogh’s olive groves, gold regalia from Ghana, and Mexican Modernist art featuring Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera,” reports Texas Monthly. “Dallas is such a diverse community,” Arteaga said during the preview, noting the growing Muslim population in the city. “We want to create exhibitions that reflect those constituencies.”