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Now On View

Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger

Date Through January 3, 2027

Location Main Campus | Kinder Building

Parking at Kinder Garage
Drop off at Kinder Building
Get Tickets

Ready to Visit?

Member and All Access tickets include same-day admission to this exhibition, all Special Exhibitions, and the MFAH Permanent Collections. On Thursday, entry to this exhibition is included with a ticket to the Permanent Collections.

Email Your Questions [email protected]

Now On View

Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger

Date Through January 3, 2027

Location Main Campus | Kinder Building

Parking at Kinder Garage
Drop off at Kinder Building
Get Tickets

Ready to Visit?

Member and All Access tickets include same-day admission to this exhibition, all Special Exhibitions, and the MFAH Permanent Collections. On Thursday, entry to this exhibition is included with a ticket to the Permanent Collections.

Email Your Questions [email protected]

Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger traces the radical career of Swiss avant-garde artist Bernhard Schobinger, who has created some of the most distinctive, influential, and pathbreaking jewelry of the past five decades.

One of the most significant artists working in contemporary jewelry today, Bernhard Schobinger reimagines it as a subversive medium, using scavenged and alternative materials to reveal their hidden histories. Going Underground, the first U.S. exhibition to examine Schobinger’s career, features pivotal pieces of experimental jewelry and selected sculptures from 1968 to the present, with necklaces, bracelets, and rings drawn from prominent private collections and the holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. 
 
The exhibition explores the artist’s work in critical dialogue with the long shadow of World War II, the anarchy of punk music, and the political and cultural forces that have shaped his life. Schobinger’s aesthetic inspirations include Dadaism and Concrete Art. His Swiss cultural inheritance and an abiding interest in Japanese culture have also informed his practice. 
 
Schobinger’s pioneering work invites audiences to explore the ways in which jewelry can be made from detritus, nature, and precious metals in order to provoke new meanings. Unexpected elements are transformed by the artist’s keen eye and meticulous hands: fishing lures and wedding rings foraged over decades of diving in Lake Zurich; metal and asphalt shards dug out of a decrepit New York City street in the late 1970s; glass, nails, and saw blades that were salvaged.

Plan Your Visit

Publication 
The illustrated exhibition catalogue is available through the MFA Shop (713-639-7360) and the Museum’s Hirsch Library (713-639-7325). 

Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger / September 3, 2026–January 3, 2027

"Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger" is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
 
Major support is provided by:
Sara and Bill Morgan
 
Supported by:
Additional generous support is provided by:
Michael W. Dale Exhibitions Endowment for Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design
Dr. Sara Sant’Ambrogio
Deedie Potter Rose