"The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute is putting form back into fashion-and placing fashion at the forefront of New York's busiest institution. On Monday, the museum revealed that its spring 2026 blockbuster fashion exhibition will be "Costume Art," which examines the bond between the dressed body and visual art history. Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute, said that that relationship had long been downplayed in the belief that disembodying fashion would elevate it to "art" status."
"The exhibition will acknowledge 'the centrality of the dressed body' in the Met's collection by juxtaposing historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute with paintings, drawings, and objects spanning 5,000 years and drawn from the 16 other curatorial departments. 'There's not a single gallery in the museum in which the dressed body is not represented, making fashion the connecting thread across the 600,000-square-feet of galleries in the museum.'"
"The debate over whether fashion is art is a perennial one, despite the tremendous tourist draw the Costume Institute's has proven to be, as well as the wealth of criticism that accompanies its marquee exhibition. 'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,' the most-visited exhibition in the museum's history, drew 1.66 million visitors, surpassing even 'Treasures of Tutankhamun' in 1978, a show of such mythic scale it redefined the notion of a modern museum blockbuster."
The Costume Institute will open a spring 2026 exhibition titled "Costume Art" that examines the bond between the dressed body and visual art history. The Met is dedicating the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast galleries adjacent to the Great Hall to inaugurate the show. The exhibition will juxtapose historical and contemporary garments with paintings, drawings, and objects spanning 5,000 years drawn from 16 other curatorial departments. The presentation positions fashion as a connecting thread across the museum’s galleries and responds to persistent debate over whether fashion qualifies as art, noting prior blockbuster attendance.
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