Michael Petry
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Treasure of Memory
Picture
 

Picture
​Like a modern Jonathan Swift, Michael Petry opens our eyes to a world in which a familiar object is no longer on a human scale and we must confront the preconceptions, both personal and cultural, that prevent us from “seeing” it for all it can be. Treasure of Memory Michael Petry’s colossal necklace of thirty-two colorful blown glass beads, both humbles and empowers us as it brings us face to face with our limitations and powers.

Treasure of Memory was inspired by a glass-bead necklace that was buried with its owner in a tomb in Norway one thousand years ago. This ancient Iron Age necklace was one of the community’s finest treasures, reflecting its spiritual beliefs and embodying its relationship with the divine and the eternal. In tribute to its hallowed ancestry, Treasure of Memory was first shown at the Hå Art Center outside of Stavanger, Norway, an area noted for burial grounds dating back thousands of years. Yet even when removed from its conceptual birthplace, Michael Petry’s work stands as a metaphor for individual and cultural memory. Larger than life, it lives on, speaking of what a necklace is. 


​Treasure of Memory has been shown at

​
​​Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, USA
2010

Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi
2009

​
Glasswear, Museum of Arts and Design, New York
2009

Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile Alabama
2009

Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
2009

Treasure of Memory in Glasswear, Toledo Museum of Art
2007

Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norway
2007


The Treasure of Memory, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston
2006
​

and 

T​reasure of Memory, Ha Game Prestegard
2000
Museum of Art and Design, NYC
Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem
Art Museum of South Texas
​Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston
Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norway
  • Projects
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