Met Gala centers on 'Costume Art'
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art said the 2026 Met Gala will take place on May 4 and open “Costume Art,” a spring exhibition pairing fashion with artworks across The Met’s collection. - The exhibition opens to the public on May 10 in the museum’s new nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries, while the gala’s dress code is “Fashion is Art.” - Protest posters targeting lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos have added politics to the run-up, after The Met named them honorary chairs. (metmuseum.org)
The 2026 Met Gala will open “Costume Art,” a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition that pairs garments with artworks to examine how clothing shapes the body. (metmuseum.org) The gala is scheduled for Monday, May 4, 2026, and the exhibition opens to the public on May 10 at The Met Fifth Avenue. Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, organized the show. (metmuseum.org 1) (metmuseum.org 2) The Met said the show will focus mainly on Western art from prehistory to the present and will match pieces from the Costume Institute with objects from other collecting areas. The museum says those pairings run from “the formal to the conceptual” and from “the aesthetic to the political.” (metmuseum.org) “Costume Art” also marks a physical expansion for fashion inside the museum. It is the inaugural exhibition in the new nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries next to the Great Hall. (metmuseum.org 1) (metmuseum.org 2) The gala remains more than a red carpet: The Met says the Costume Institute Benefit is the department’s primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations. That makes the theme announcement a museum story as much as a celebrity one. (metmuseum.org) This year’s dress code is “Fashion is Art,” and The Met said lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos will serve as honorary chairs for the evening. The museum also lists Saint Laurent and Condé Nast among additional supporters of the exhibition. (metmuseum.org 1) (metmuseum.org 2) That sponsorship has already drawn protest in New York. Hyperallergic reported that “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” posters appeared across the city in April, criticizing Amazon’s labor record and its cloud business ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (hyperallergic.com) The activist group Everyone Hates Elon told Hyperallergic it raised more than $10,000 in a week to finance the poster campaign. The posters name Anna Wintour, Vogue, The Met, Bezos, and Sánchez in the run-up to the event. (hyperallergic.com) The museum’s public exhibition page says member preview tickets become available at 12 p.m. Eastern on Monday, April 27. By the first Monday in May, the gala will be carrying both its usual fashion stakes and a more explicit fight over who gets to underwrite them. (metmuseum.org)
