Houston Museum to Mount First U.S. Survey of Swiss Jeweler Bernhard Schobinger’s Career

By Annie Davidson Watson | July 14, 2026

If your definition of jewelry involves precious metals and gemstones arranged in traditionally pleasing ways, Bernhard Schobinger is not your artist. If your definition is broader than that—if you think jewelry can be subversive, confrontational, and politically charged—the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) has an exhibition for you starting Sept. 3.

“Going Underground: The Jewels of Bernhard Schobinger,” scheduled for a four-month run at MFAH, is the first retrospective of the Swiss artist’s work ever mounted in the United States, bringing together 53 pieces spanning 1968 to the present.

bernard schobinger necklace — *Necklace of antique fishing tools, hooks, and spinners, © Bernhard Schobinger, gift to MFAH of the Rotasa Collection Trust*

Schobinger, born in Zurich in 1946, built his practice around materials that fine jewelry has historically ignored: fishing lures and wedding rings dredged from the floor of Lake Zurich, metal and asphalt fragments from a crumbling New York City street in the late 1970s, salvaged glass, nails, and saw blades. These sit alongside gold and rose quartz in works that ask pointed questions about what we value and why.

MFAH’s exhibition draws from prominent private collections as well as the museum’s own holdings, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with essays by the curators and the artist himself.

Bernard Schobinger ring — Grass Ring, 18k gold, © Bernhard Schobinger, 1977, promised gift of the Rotasa Collection Trust

“Schobinger’s practice engages deeply with the material and conceptual legacies of movements such as Dada and Concrete Art while embracing the disruptive ethos of punk,” said curators Cindi Strauss and Elizabeth Essner in a joint statement. “His works operate as complex assemblages in which found and precious materials coexist, challenging traditional hierarchies of value.”

The Schobinger exhibition will be located on the second floor of MFAH’s Nancy and Rich Kinder Building. A “Perspectives on Contemporary Jewelry” symposium will be held at the museum on Sept. 26 in conjunction with both the Schobinger show and another MFAH exhibit, of German jeweler Dorothea Prühl’s work.

Top: Snake Plays With Pearl bangle in iron, gold, and cinnabar with cultured pearl, black diamonds, and malachite, © Bernhard Schobinger, 1995, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Helen Williams Drutt Collection, purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Foundation (all photos by Thomas R. DuBrock, courtesy of MFAH)

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