When the trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, accessioned the Helen Williams Drutt Collection of contemporary jewelry in 2002, they were motivated by the belief that fine art transcends all media and academic classifications. The Drutt Collection has been described as the finest of its kind, an assemblage of more than eight hundred works of art intended to adorn the human body. The artists reside in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, and their work covers a broad range of artistic styles. Each work in the Drutt Collection is an original, individual expression that defines its unique place in the world of art. Often jewelry collections are praised merely because they mirror broad artistic movements as seen in painting and sculpture, and the jewels are considered to be miniature versions of more "serious" artworks. Not this collection: Drutt"s world is its own environment, fiercely independent and aggressively one of a kind. Because the...