Join curator and jewelry designer Renée Riccardo for an evening of looking, making, and creative experimentation inspired by Jessica Lichtenstein: Rewilding. Drawing from the exhibition’s varied materials, bold colors, and imaginative interpretations of the natural world, participants will explore how visual inspiration can be translated into wearable design. Through associative beading, participants will experiment with color, texture, pattern, and form to develop their own one-of-a-kind beaded necklace inspired by the exhibition.

About the Designer

Born and raised in New York, Renée Riccardo is an independent curator, art advisor, jewelry designer, and lecturer whose career spans more than four decades. A former Adjunct Curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), Riccardo began organizing exhibitions in 1985 and founded ARENA gallery in SoHo in 1991. Over the years, she has presented exhibitions in galleries, alternative spaces, and unconventional venues, including co-organizing the acclaimed Art Exchange Show across nine floors of two abandoned Wall Street office buildings in 1996 and 1997. Her work with ARENA was featured in The New York Times in the seminal article “The Neo Dealers,” which highlighted a new generation of independent approaches to exhibiting contemporary art.

In 2010, Riccardo began creating ARENAgal by Renée Riccardo, a one-of-a-kind jewelry line inspired by her experience as a curator and her passion for contemporary art. She developed her practice while participating in a beading workshop during a serious illness, discovering a new way to translate the colors, textures, forms, and ideas that inspire her in the gallery into wearable objects. Her jewelry practice expanded through commissions from institutions including the Whitney Museum and the Jewish Museum, where she created necklaces in response to exhibitions on view. Today, her work continues to explore the connection between contemporary art, personal expression, and design.