first looks

Wearable Art Takes On a Whole New Meaning at the Guggenheim

Clockwise from top, five-piece necklace, $395, small cuff bracelet, $325, hoop earrings, $175.Photo: Courtesy of the Guggenheimstore.com

New Yorkers have been known to flaunt their cultural affinities in any number of wearable ways: See studded cuffs on St. Marks Place, Rasta beanies in Washington Square Park, ironic mustaches on Ludlow Street, and guys in too-skinny jeans on Bedford Avenue. But it seems uptown art fanatics weren’t content with the free canvas totes that help distinguish them as museum patrons — they’ll soon be wearing actual pieces of the Guggenheim instead. Frank Lloyd Wright’s most recognizable masterpiece has just undergone a little nip and tuck (it officially reopens with a cocktail reception tomorrow night), and the resulting fragments have become a line of jewelry called “Restoration Rocks.”

West Coast artist Cara Tilker ensconced pieces from the museum’s exterior in acrylic and set them in sterling silver in the form of rings, bracelets, cuff links, earrings, and necklaces. “Frank Lloyd Wright’s people actually came to me and asked me to embed their debris,” Tilker says. Sounds like an impossible-to-resist offer to us. “Each piece tells a story of American history — it allows everyone to become a part of it, have a piece of it,” she says. We can only hope discarded-crack-vial pendants, commemorative souvenirs of once-gritty Avenue C, are up next. See more artsy baubles after the jump. —Tracey Lomrantz

$175–$4,350 at GuggenheimStore.org.

Pendant necklace, $275, cuff links, $300.Photo: Courtesy of the Guggenheimstore.com

Wearable Art Takes On a Whole New Meaning at the Guggenheim