The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched 'Costume Art,' its inaugural exhibition in the new permanent Condé Nast Galleries. Curator Andrew Bolton structured the show around diverse body typologies to connect fashion and art through the human form. Interactive mannequins by sculptor Samar Hejazi reflect visitors' own images, fostering personal empathy.
The exhibition, titled “Costume Art,” debuted in the Condé Nast Galleries just off the Met's Great Hall. This marks the Costume Institute's first show in the new space, allowing for extended display periods. Bolton explained that the display is organized around body typologies seen across the museum's artworks, emphasizing the dressed body as a unifying thread. “The simple thesis for the show really is the fact that the dressed body is the connecting thread throughout the entire museum,” Bolton said. Diverse mannequins modeled after named individuals challenge traditional beauty standards, as noted by scholar Llewellyn Negrin in the catalog, where she highlighted how mannequins often perpetuate idealized proportions. The show explores polarities like the art-fashion divide through sections such as “Diversity in Bodily Being,” featuring pregnant, corpulent, and disabled bodies, and “Bodily Being in Its Universality,” addressing anatomy, aging, and mortality. Highlights include Vivienne Westwood leggings paired with Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, Rudi Gernreich’s 1964 monokini, and garments by designers like Rei Kawakubo and Duran Lantink that celebrate non-normative forms. Bolton paired a Van Gogh painting with pieces by Yves Saint Laurent and Jonathan Anderson for Loewe, linking them through shared mental health themes. In the “Abstract Body” section, historical foundation garments like corsets illustrate how fashion molded women's forms, paired with George Seurat’s 1884 study. The exhibit inverts traditional views by examining artworks through fashion's lens. “We’re not creating a new hierarchy, we’re just trying to create more of an equitability between artworks and bodies,” Bolton observed. It addresses fashion's historical marginalization due to its ties to the body and femininity, while countering AI-driven flatness with tactile experiences like braille on Angela Wanjiku’s dress. Bolton rejected labeling the show as “woke,” stating, “It isn’t intended to be a woke show, but yes, it’s certainly intended to address how different types of bodies are under attack.” The exhibition promotes connection among creative expressions and human experiences, inviting visitors to project their own stories onto the displays.
