Munich 2025

Sunrise from my hotel room at the Charles in Munich

Well, the world is falling apart but it is time again for the infamous Munich blog. So here I go again. I have done this for years and every year it is very similar to the previous year. But this year I hope to take a deep dive into the Schmuck fair itself. The reason for that is that most of my time this year will be spent out at the fair. I organized a series of speakers for a booth that AJF got, and I feel I must be there for their presentations. They happen every day. The group of speakers are people I like and I thought would have something to say, so I am very interested to hear what they have put together for their very short talks. I have asked for controversial topics and hopefully most of them will be.

So today is Wednesday—the first day of the fair—and the speakers I have lined up are Otto Kunzli, Liesbeth den Besten, and Khanya Mthethwa. Otto's title is Cracks. Lisbeth will speak about The Dialectics of Lead: The End of CJ or a New Beginning? And Khanya will speak about Defining a South African Aesthetic in Art Jewelry. They sound interesting, don't they?

Here are some images from the talks. Otto was poetic, Liesbeth was questioning and Khanya was fascinating.

The space we are sharing with Arnodsche

Stef Fedor, the new Ed of AJF, introducing Otto

Liesbeth

Khanya

In between these talks I looked at the Schmuck show right across the alley. Here are some of the highlights for me.

Louki Richards- Greece/ Germany

Vicki Mason- Australia

Nanna Obel - Germany

Jongseok Lim- South Korea

Mona Wallström- Sweden

Maarja Ninemägi- Estonia

Shinji Nakaba- Japan

Felike van der Leest- Norway/The Netherlands

Gerladine Fenn- South Afrida/ Namibia

So after the talks and the Schmuck show I saw the other 3 galleries near the AJF booth and that is as far as I got today. Here is the first one, Galerie Noel Guyomarc'h from Montreal, Canada.