From Louise Bourgeois to Yoko Ono

Jewelry by female artists

November 21, 2025 to April 26, 2026

With “From Louise Bourgeois to Yoko Ono: Jewelry by Women Artists,” the Museum of Applied Arts Cologne (MAKK) presents the first special exhibition in Germany dedicated specifically to jewelry designs by female visual artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition showcases approximately 90 pieces of jewelry by 45 internationally renowned artists. 

The works offer insights into artistic movements from the 1920s to the present day—from Meret Oppenheim and Aube Elléouet, icons of the Surrealist movement, to the celebrated conceptual art of Alicja Kwade. They reflect artistic trends of their time while simultaneously opening up surprising perspectives on the individual artists’ oeuvres. Each of the exhibited pieces condenses an artistic vision into a wearable statement. Formally, some pieces captivate with their minimalist aesthetic, others with their expressive, sculptural presence, or playful humor. 

The exhibition, conceived exclusively for the MAKK, deliberately focuses on female positions and breaks with the male-dominated perception of avant-garde artists’ jewelry of the 20th and 21st centuries. Represented in the exhibition are: Lynda Benglis, Pierrette Bloch, Barbara Bloom, Katinka Bock, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Britton, Claudia Comte, Sheila Concari, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Nathalia Edenmont, Aube Elléouët, Claire Falkenstein, Ruth Francken, Marcia Grostein, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Annabelle d’Huart, Leiko Ikemura, Margit Jäschke, Jacqueline de Jong, Alicja Kwade, Claude Lalanne, Liliane Lijn, Rita McBride, Blanca Muños, Brigitte Nahon, ER Nele, Louise Nevelson, Michele Oka Doner, Yoko Ono, Meret Oppenheim, Françoise Pétrovitch, Armelle de Sainte Marie, Niki de Saint Phalle, Elodie Seguin, Maïlys Seydoux Dumas, Kiki Smith, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Dorothea Tanning, Rosemarie Trockel, Paloma Varga Weisz, Sophia Vari, Joana Vasconcelos, and Zhou Yiyan. 

With the exhibition “From Louise Bourgeois to Yoko Ono,” the MAKK builds on the great success with visitors and international press of the collection presentation “Fascination Jewelry: 7000 Years of Jewelry Art at the MAKK.” It sees itself as a satellite exhibition and a thematic extension of this collection presentation, which, for the first time since the museum’s founding, presents around 370 objects from the MAKK’s outstanding jewelry collection, spanning from antiquity to the present day. 

The exhibition will be accompanied in November 2025 by the publication of the same name “From Louise Bourgeois to Yoko Ono. Jewelry by Women Artists” (German/English) published by Arnoldsche Art Publishers, edited by Petra Hesse and Lena Hoppe with a contribution by Louisa Guinness.