MAD About Jewelry Returns With 45 Artists, Upcycled Layering Pieces

Forty-five jewelers from 20 countries will converge at the Museum of Arts and Design, and that scale alone says something about where jewelry layering is headed: less uniform gold-chain stacking, more sculptural mixes of material, culture, and gender. MAD About Jewelry, the museum’s signature benefit celebration and annual curated sale, will return to 2 Columbus Circle with a roster that pushes well beyond the polished basics into glass, paper, textiles, reclaimed objects, and traditional metals.

The 26th edition will open with an exclusive first look on Tuesday, May 5, before the public sale runs May 6 to 9. For collectors, that window matters because this is not a showroom of interchangeable accessories. It is a chance to meet the artists, hear how each piece is built, and buy one-of-a-kind wearable work directly from the makers, a format that has helped make MAD About Jewelry one of the most influential showcases of contemporary artist-made jewelry in the United States.

This year’s materials tell the story. Ana Norman will show hand-sculpted polymer clay jewelry, a material choice that moves layering away from precious-metal hierarchy and toward color, volume, and playful surface. Fatma Mostafa, whose practice bridges painting, embroidery, and metalwork, integrates traditional embroidery with metal, a combination that gives necklace and collar forms a textile softness even when the structure is hard-edged. Raluca Buzura works with porcelain and high-temperature firing to create sculptural adornments, proof that the next wave of layering will not be limited to chain length alone; it will also be about weight, finish, and the tension between fragility and strength.

Bryna Pomp, MAD About Jewelry’s director and curator, reviewed nearly 1,000 collections before selecting the final participants, a filtration process that makes the 45-artist roster feel sharply edited rather than merely expansive. Egypt and Slovenia will appear in the event for the first time through Fatma Mostafa and Srečko Molk, underscoring how global the conversation around contemporary jewelry has become. MAD’s own history page also points to why the fair carries such weight: it is the only American museum with a gallery devoted both to temporary jewelry exhibitions and to its own collection of contemporary and modern studio and art jewelry.

Last year’s edition featured 50 artists from 23 countries, so the 2026 roster is slightly smaller but more tightly focused. The takeaway for everyday layering is clear: expect shorter runs of chains interrupted by sculptural pieces, mixed materials worn together with intention, and men’s and unisex jewelry that treats proportion, not gender, as the real design language.