New York — If there is one unifying theme to all of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s popular fashion exhibitions, it is the simple idea that fashion is art.
“The Art of Fashion,” announced Monday as the next big show at the museum’s Costume Institute — launched by the star-studded Met Gala in 2026 — aims to make that connection more literal than ever before, connecting clothing to objects from across the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with different art forms.
Max Hollin, CEO and director of the Met, said in an interview before Monday’s announcement that he hopes the exhibition will take New York museum visitors on a (very modern) journey through art history, where they will see connections throughout.
“It’s a show that can live in wonderful ways in a museum and can draw on all the different areas in our collection — the paintings, sculptures, drawings,” Hollin said.
“I hope we can all agree that fashion is art,” Hollin added. “But actually I think the exhibition… will make it clear how fashion actually happens, so to speak, throughout the museum and in all the different media really.”
The new show will address the clothed body, and will be themed based on different body types, according to Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator-in-charge. It will include ‘the nude body’ and ‘the classical body’ for example, but will also include less expected topics such as ‘the pregnant body’ and ‘the aging body’.
The connections that will be drawn between artworks and clothing will range, “from the formal to the conceptual, from the aesthetic to the political, from the individual to the universal, from the illustrative to the symbolic, and from the playful to the profound,” the curators said in a statement.
One example: In the “Naked Body” section, a 1504 print by German artist Albrecht Dürer will be paired with spandex bodysuits by Belgian designer Walter van Beirendonck from a 2009 collection that revisits the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Attending Monday’s announcement was Misty Copeland, who recently retired from American Ballet Theater after a pioneering career that made her the company’s first Black principal dancer. In her statements, she spoke about the interaction between fashion and dance and said that the show presents “a powerful case for the body, in all its forms, as a work of art worth seeing, elevating, and celebrating.”
“Of course, fashion and dance have always supported the ‘ideal’ body, a body that has historically meant thin, white and female. This bias has shaped my own experience,” she said. “Early in my career, I felt like my body didn’t fit the mold. My skin was too dark, my muscles too defined. Being a black woman and a ballet dancer was presented almost as a contradiction.”
Copeland said she fought to challenge that idea and stood “steadfast in the value and beauty of my body, and the many Black and brown dancers whose bodies are often overlooked.” The new exhibit — following “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” which focused on black menswear — adds to that conversation, Copeland said.
It’s also a show that will have a new home. “The Art of Fashion,” which opens to the public on May 10, will open a new gallery space occupying about 12,000 square feet (1,115 square meters), directly opposite the museum’s Great Hall.
That means that when celebrities take the main steps on May 4 at the Met Gala — perhaps dressed to channel famous art objects — they’ll be just feet from the gallery, making it easier to view the art before sipping it and socializing. (Party details — such as celebrity hosts and specific dress code — will be shared later.)
Hollin said the museum was mainly interested in giving fashion a more prominent place and giving regular visitors a more seamless experience. In past years, long lines in front of fashion fairs would snake through other showrooms and create bottlenecks in inconvenient places.
The new Conde M. Nast galleries — created from what was formerly the museum’s retail store — will house not only all of the exhibits coming from the Spring Fashion Institute, but other displays from different parts of the museum.
The exhibition space “will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that recognizes the critical role that fashion plays not only in art history but also in contemporary culture,” Bolton said in a statement.
The “Art of Fashion” exhibition opens its doors to the public on May 10, 2026, and continues until January 10, 2027.
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