The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled the Condé M. Nast Galleries for its Costume Institute, transforming a former gift shop into a prime exhibition space. The new almost-12,000-square-foot area, adjacent to the Great Hall, hosts the 'Costume Art' exhibition, pairing fashion with artworks from across the museum's collections. Curator Andrew Bolton described fashion as 'beyond art' for embodying lived experience.
The Costume Institute's expansion places fashion at the museum's heart, between the Egyptian galleries and Greek and Roman galleries. Designed by Brooklyn-based Peterson Rich Office—led by Nathan Rich and Miriam Peterson—the galleries feature five interconnected spaces with limestone thresholds, gray-and-white stone floors, beamed ceilings, and Venetian plaster walls. 'It had to feel as if it had always been there,' said Nathan Rich of the flexible, rotating exhibition space developed in collaboration with Bolton. Max Hollein, the museum's CEO and director, called the move 'a powerful continuation' of the institution's identity, not a revolution. The galleries are named for Condé M. Nast, founder of Vogue and Vanity Fair. The 'Costume Art' show explores the dressed body through juxtapositions like a 460 BCE Greek vessel alongside a 1920s Fortuny gown, or Albrecht Dürer's 'Man of Sorrows' with Vivienne Westwood's 'Martyr to Love' jacket. Bolton aimed to present fashion as a lens for art, creating new meanings through formal, conceptual, political, or humorous pairings. Designers and artists praised the shift. Michael Kors noted the institute's role in highlighting fashion's ties to pop culture, politics, and art. Tory Burch said it recognizes fashion as essential to shared history. Artist Maurizio Cattelan observed that fashion and art now share obsessions with the body, power, and desire, framing fashion as narrative. Dissent was mild; New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni views fashion as a valuable discipline reflecting desires, even if not 'Art.'
