Costume Art: A New Exhibition
Emmilea Stoliker
Costume Art at the MET Museum
For spring 2026, a new spring collection will be released at the MET Museum, titled Costume Art. The Museum will host the exhibition in its barely 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Gallery, in addition, they announced the opening date as May 10th, 2026. Moreover, visitors are sure to be delighted by the unique blend of art and costume featured in Costume Art.
What is the MET Museum?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the “MET”) was founded in 1870, first opening its doors at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The METS collections and exhibitions are all donated works of art, as well as the first one being a Roman sarcophagus. The museum’s collections continued to grow, and by the 20th century the Metropolitan Museum of Art became one of the world’s great art centers. As a result, in 1938, they opened a second location in Northern Manhattan (The MET Cloisters), which is dedicated to the architecture of medieval Europe. Furthermore, as part of their diverse offerings, the museum will showcase Costume Art in future exhibitions.
Photography by Anna – Marie Kellen, image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Courtesy Renata Buzzo. Photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
What is the Costume Art Exhibition?
It will feature almost 400 items drawn from The Met’s extensive collection. In addition, Costume Art will combine clothing and artwork to reveal fresh relationships. By contrasting clothing and artwork from the Museum’s extensive collection, the exhibition will explore the importance of the dressed body. Additionally, It will highlight the intricate relationship between fashion as an embodied art form and artistic depictions of the body. The Met will display costume art at their location on Fifth Avenue from May 10, 2026, until January 10, 2027.
Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The MET Gala!
In addition, to celebrate the opening of the spring collection of 2026, the MET Gala will also be taking place. The Gala’s dress code, “Fashion is Art,” encourages attendees to appreciate the innumerable representations of the dressed body throughout art history. Attendees should actively show their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form.
Notably, Costume Art often inspires the creative themes and dress codes at the Gala. Furthermore, the Costume Institute’s main source of yearly funding for exhibitions, publications, purchases, and operations comes from the earnings of the annual Met Gala. This event, which takes place on the first Monday in May, raises money that funds other Museum initiatives.
For the Costume Institute Benefit, or in other words The MET Gala, will take place on May 4th. Some names to co-chair this event will be Beyonce, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos are responsible for the exhibition and Benefit.
Y/Project (French, founded 2010) Photographed by Paul Westlake, image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
MET Museum Website
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Emmilea Stoliker grew up in a tiny town in Delaware, where she developed her love of photography. Growing up, her eyes felt like camera lenses, always looking for the perfect composition for the perfect photograph. She would steal her mother’s phone to take a photo of any type of composition she thought was worth documenting. Later on, she moved to New York City to continue on with her passion for photography by studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Being a New York City-based freelance photographer, she loves manipulating different art genres and subgenres, which includes: Portraiture, still life, street photography, collage works, etc, and making multiple genres work together creatively and collaboratively. Emmilea loves to think outside of the box when it comes to creativity behind the screen.
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