Met’s ‘Costume Art’ preview

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring 2026 Costume Institute show, “Costume Art,” will open May 10 in new permanent galleries after this year’s Met Gala on May 4. (metmuseum.org) The museum said the exhibition will bring together nearly 400 objects from across its collection, pairing historical and contemporary garments with paintings, drawings, sculpture, and other works. It will run at the Met Fifth Avenue through January 10, 2027. (metmuseum.org) Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, framed the show around “the dressed body” rather than treating clothes as separate from the people who wear them. The Met said the pairings are meant to show fashion as an embodied art form and to trace links between clothing and representations of the body across art history. (metmuseum.org; metmuseum.org) That framing marks a shift from the museum’s older habit of elevating fashion by distancing it from wearers and everyday use. In announcing the show in December, the Met said “Costume Art” would correct that by emphasizing the body’s central place in both fashion and visual culture. (artnews.com; metmuseum.org) The exhibition also arrives with a major institutional change: it will inaugurate the Costume Institute’s nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries next to the Great Hall. The Met said the new space will host the institute’s annual spring blockbuster and, at times, shows from other curatorial departments. (metmuseum.org; metmuseum.org) The annual Met Gala remains tied directly to the exhibition and to the institute’s finances. The museum said proceeds from the May 4 benefit are the Costume Institute’s primary annual source of funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations. (metmuseum.org) This year’s gala dress code is “Fashion is Art,” and the co-chairs are Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz will co-chair the host committee, and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos will serve as honorary chairs. (metmuseum.org) The museum said the exhibition focuses primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present, with themes ranging from the formal and aesthetic to the political and symbolic. Those pairings are organized around recurring body types that the Met says appear across time and cultures. (metmuseum.org) Vogue’s early look at the show put Bolton’s argument in sharper terms, quoting him as saying, “In a way fashion is beyond art.” With the gala less than three weeks away, the Met is using its biggest fashion event to introduce a broader museum claim: clothing belongs inside art history without being stripped from the body. (vogue.com; metmuseum.org)