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A major exhibition of jewellery from famed fashion house Cartier is set to open at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2026, the gallery announced today.
Cartier, which premiered at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum earlier this year, will see more than a century of historic jewellery items on display, including many associated with aristocratic and pop culture figures, from Princess Margaret and Wallis Simpson to Elizabeth Taylor and Rihanna. It is set to be the largest exhibition of Cartier pieces ever staged in Australia.
Elizabeth Taylor at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, June 1958Credit: Photofest, courtesy of the NGV
In an Australian exclusive, the NGV’s iteration of the show will also feature jewellery worn by opera singer Dame Nellie Melba – who was a major client of Cartier at the turn of the century – as well as a range of jewellery made with Australian opals.
“The Melba pieces represent a moment when Cartier was really gaining in international significance,” said Amanda Dunsmore, the NGV’s senior curator for international decorative arts and antiquities. Dunsmore said the pieces reflect key shifts in design, including incorporating platinum into the settings and the evolution of Cartier’s Garland style, which took cues from Parisian architecture.
Cartier is the latest in the Winter Masterpieces exhibition series across the NGV, Melbourne Museum and ACMI. Last week the Victorian government announced that the series has drawn 8 million visitors to date.
The exhibition, designed by Netherlands-based designers Studio Sabine Marcelis and CLOUD, will examine Cartier’s art deco influences, its design evolution across the last century, the pieces’ materials and their provenance, as well as behind-the-scenes material from the Cartier archives.
Other key pieces to be displayed include a tiara owned by Begum Aga Khan III, which has a 32-carat yellow diamond in its centre, and a Panther sapphire clip brooch worn by the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, with a 152-carat Kashmir cabochon sapphire.
Dunsmore cites the Granard necklace, owned by Lady Beatrice Forbes, Countess of Granard, as the epitome of Cartier style, with a 143.23-carat emerald. “It’s really quite an intense design, and it speaks to a level of glamour and sophistication,” she says.
“It’s not just bling,” says Helen Molesworth, the curator of the London iteration of the exhibition. “We learn about ourselves from jewellery. It tells us about trade and travel, about romance and love, about politics and propaganda, about finance and fashion. You can learn so much from understanding how jewellery is made, why, and where.”
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Cartier was established in Paris in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that the business was established as a global brand by his grandsons, Louis, Pierre and Jacques Cartier. Today, it’s a multi-billion dollar brand.
But for Molesworth and Dunsmore, the exhibition’s crowning glory is a room of tiaras.
“The tiara is the crowning moment of the jeweller’s art,” says Molesworth. “They tell us a lot about society and how it’s changed over the 20th century, but also about these different artistic, brilliant styles that we had seen from the 1900s to the present day. The tiara room is going to blow people away.”
Cartier is at NGV International from June 12 to October 4, 2026.
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