Costume Art pairs couture pieces with items from its collection in exploration of many kinds of human bodies
Speaking at the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute spring exhibition in New York, Anna Wintour described the first Monday in May as her “favourite day of the year, and also my most terrifying one”.
This particular Monday may be more high-stakes than previous years, with Monday night’s Met Gala for the exhibition’s launch mired in controversy, owing to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos’s sponsorship of the event. It is also the inaugural exhibition for the Costume Institute’s new home: a 12,000 sq ft space, named the Condé M Nast Galleries, that puts the museum’s fashion exhibitions in a considerably more high-profile spot, right off its Great Hall.
Three times the size of the institute’s previous basement home, the gallery acknowledges the popularity of fashion exhibitions, which are frequently among the Met’s most visited shows, and puts them in the same crowd-pleasing category as ancient Egyptian artefacts.
Titled Costume Art, the exhibition pairs 200 garments and accessories with 200 artworks from the Met’s collection. The idea, said the lead curator, Andrew Bolton, is to invite us to “reconsider longstanding hierarchies” and consider art in the context of the fashion pieces in the show, rather than the other way round. It was inspired by the idea that “the dressed body” is one aspect that is present in the Met’s enormous collection.
