If there's been one uniting theme of all the blockbuster fashion exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it’s the simple idea that fashion is art.
"Costume Art,” announced Monday (Nov 17) as the next big show at the museum’s Costume Institute – launched by the starry Met Gala in 2026 – aims to make that connection more literal than ever, pairing garments with objects from across the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with different art forms.
Max Hollein, CEO and director of the Met, said in an interview ahead of Monday’s announcement that he hopes the exhibit will take visitors to the New York museum on a (very fashionable) journey through art history, where they will see connections throughout.
"It’s a show that can really live in fascinating ways at the museum and can pull from all different areas of our collection – paintings, sculpture, drawings,” Hollein said.
"I hope we all agree that fashion is art,” Hollein added.
"But actually I think the exhibition… will make it obvious how fashion is actually happening, so to say, all across the museum and in all different mediums already.”
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The new show will examine the dressed body, and will be organised thematically by different body types, according to the Costume Institute's curator in charge, Andrew Bolton.
It will include the "Naked Body” and the "Classical Body,” for example, but also less expected themes like the "Pregnant Body” and the "Ageing Body”.
The connections that will be drawn between artworks and garments will range, curators said in a statement, "from the formal to the conceptual, the aesthetic to the political, the individual to the universal, the illustrative to the symbolic, and the playful to the profound”.
One example: in the "Naked Body” section, a 1504 print from German artist Albrecht Durerwill be paired with spandex bodysuits by Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonckfrom a 2009 collection that revisits the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
On hand for the announcement was Misty Copeland,who recently retired from American Ballet Theatre after a trailblazing career that saw her become the company's first Black female principal dancer.
In her remarks, she spoke of the interplay between fashion and dance and said the show makes a "powerful case for the body, in all its forms, as a work of art, worthy of being seen, elevated and celebrated”.
"Of course, both fashion and dance have long held up an ‘ideal’ body, one that has historically meant thin, white, and female. That bias shaped my own experience,” she said.
"Early in my career, I was made to feel that my body didn’t fit the mold. My skin was too dark, my muscles too defined. Being a Black woman and a ballerina was presented almost as a contradiction.”
Copeland said she fought to challenge that ideaand stood "firmly in the value and beauty of my body, and of the many Black and brown dancers whose bodies have so often been overlooked”.
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The new exhibit – following the lauded "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”, which focused on Black menswear – adds to that conversation, Copeland said.
It’s also a show that will have a new home.
"Costume Art,” which opens to the public May 10, will inaugurate new gallery space occupying some 12,000sqft (1,115sqm), right off the museum’s Great Hall.
That means that when the A-listers come up the main steps on May 4 at the Met Gala – perhaps dressed to channel famous objects of art, they will be only feet from the exhibit, making it easier to view the art before sipping and socialising.
Hollein said the museum was mainly concerned with giving fashion a more prominent home – and giving regular visitors a smoother experience.
In past years, long lines for fashion exhibits would snake through other galleries and create bottlenecks in inconvenient places.
The new Conde M Nast galleries – created from what was formerly the museum’s retail store – will house not only all spring Costume Institute exhibits to come, but other shows from different parts of the museum.
Bolton said in a statement that the gallery space "will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that acknowledges the critical role fashion plays not only within art history but also within contemporary culture”. – AP
