The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is preparing to launch its most ambitious fashion exhibition yet, marking a significant shift in how the institution presents fashion as an art form. The museum announced that its spring 2026 blockbuster exhibition will be titled "Costume Art," which will explore the fundamental relationship between the dressed human body and visual art history spanning 5,000 years.
The exhibition will inaugurate the newly constructed Condé M. Nast galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Great Hall. These galleries bear the name of the late magazine magnate in recognition of his company's leading financial contribution to the project. This substantial investment demonstrates the Met's commitment to elevating fashion's status within the museum's broader artistic mission.
Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, explained that the exhibition challenges a long-held belief in the art world that fashion must be "disembodied" to achieve true art status. "Over the last two decades, fashion has increasingly gained acceptance as a subject worthy of the same serious contemplation as that accorded the traditional arts—painting and sculpture," Bolton stated. "Fashion's acceptance as an art form, however, has occurred very much on art's terms, being premised on its renunciation of all connections with the body."
The curator emphasized that this approach overlooks how garments are actually experienced by their wearers—not merely as visual artifacts to be observed, but as material objects to be worn and lived in. "Costume Art" will showcase this philosophy by presenting historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute alongside paintings, drawings, and objects drawn from all 16 of the Met's other curatorial departments.
Bolton has organized the exhibition around a typology of bodies that can be categorized into three main groups. These include the sinewy nudes commonly found in classical art, as well as body types rarely celebrated in fashion, such as pregnant and aging forms. This inclusive approach aims to represent the full spectrum of human physical experience.
Visitors can expect thoughtful pairings that illuminate the connections between fashion and fine art. One preview example features British designer Georgina Godley's 1986-87 pregnancy dress, displayed on a mannequin with a swollen belly, positioned alongside a double-exposed photograph by Harry Callahan. In Callahan's image, his wife's baby bump emerges like a planet from shadowy space, with two moon-like breasts orbiting nearby, creating a cosmic interpretation of pregnancy.
Another striking piece in the exhibition is a fitted 2009 jumpsuit by Belgian designer Walter Van Beirendonck, adorned with imagery of the nude male form. This garment evokes a retelling of the Biblical Garden of Eden story, where Adam eats the apple and, in an imaginative twist, feels no shame for his newfound nakedness. Such pieces demonstrate how contemporary designers draw on both art historical allegory and anatomical imagery.
Bolton noted during the press preview that the majority of works shown would engage in dialogue with Western art history, though each designer has approached human nature through unique perspectives. The exhibition will highlight how these creators have either accentuated or uncannily interpreted the human form through their designs.
The Costume Institute has proven to be a tremendous draw for the Met, with fashion exhibitions consistently breaking attendance records. "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" became the most-visited exhibition in the museum's history, attracting 1.66 million visitors and even surpassing the legendary "Treasures of Tutankhamun" from 1978, which had previously redefined the concept of a modern museum blockbuster.
The strategic placement of the new exhibition underscores fashion's central role throughout the Met's collection. As Bolton pointed out, there is not a single gallery in the museum where the dressed body is not represented, making fashion a connecting thread across the institution's 600,000 square feet of gallery space.
"Costume Art is a celebration of the body in all of its strengths and weaknesses, its resiliencies and vulnerabilities, its perfections and imperfections, its idiosyncrasies and commonalities, its sublime beauty, its wondrous complexity, its glorious and miraculous diversity," Bolton concluded. This exhibition promises to reshape how visitors understand the relationship between fashion, art, and the human experience when it opens in spring 2026.
