THE MET COSTUME INSTITUTE PRESENTS COSTUME ART IN NEW YORK

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced its next major Costume Institute exhibition titled Costume Art, which will run from 10 May 2026 to 10 January 2027 at The Met Fifth Avenue.
The exhibition will inaugurate the new Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000 square foot space located next to the Great Hall, designed to host the Costume Institute’s annual exhibitions and other projects dedicated to fashion as an artistic discipline.

The exhibition examines the relationship between clothing and the body across more than five thousand years of Western art history.
Curators have chosen to place garments in dialogue with works from the museum’s painting and sculpture collections, creating visual connections between fashion and fine art.
This approach highlights how dressed bodies have been understood, represented and transformed over time, and how clothing itself can function as a form of embodied art.

Alongside historical pieces, the exhibition includes contemporary creations that address themes often overlooked, such as the naked body, the ageing body and the pregnant body.
Through this thematic structure, Costume Art aims to move beyond traditional display formats and invite visitors to reconsider fashion within a broader cultural and artistic context.
The exhibition will be one of the major highlights of New York’s cultural calendar and follows the Met Gala, scheduled for 4 May 2026, which traditionally marks the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition.