“Costume Art” at The Met Explores the Body Through Fashion and Artistic Expression

Organized by Andrew Bolton, “Costume Art” is the newest exhibition from the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, opening May 10 and running through January 10, 2027. Centered on the dialogue between art and fashion, the exhibition explores how clothing has long functioned as both artistic expression and cultural reflection.

Held within the new 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries, the exhibition marks a monumental shift for the legacy of the Costume Institute, securing a permanent and expansive home following a three-year renovation by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of the architecture firm Peterson Rich. The new space, formerly the museum’s gift shop, opens directly from the Great Hall into a soaring, light-filled gallery. Elongated doorways create portals between spaces while subtly referencing the museum itself, which is composed of 21 connected buildings.

Alongside these elongated openings are beautifully crafted white oak architectural details with coffered paneling that function as movable doorways, allowing exhibitions to close seamlessly between shows. The effect feels integrated into the museum’s historic architecture rather than imposed upon it.

With over 400 objects spanning centuries of human history from the museum’s collection, “Costume Art” juxtaposes garments alongside works of fine art, tracing a continuous dialogue between the body, aesthetics, and cultural identity.

From the Sacred to the Erotic

The exhibition opens with “The Naked & Nude Body,” tracing the story of Adam and Eve and the influence of the body within Western artistic traditions. Here, the body moves between sacredness and transgression, exploring how nudity has long existed as both vulnerability and provocation.

Moving into the High Gallery, “Bodily Being in its Diversity” examines the Classical body rooted in Greco-Roman antiquity and its aesthetic paradigms of harmony, symmetry, and proportion. Mythology-inspired garments are paired with statues, bronze armor, and marble sculptures, grounding fashion within centuries of artistic ideals that continue to shape Western visual culture today.

White perforated scrims divide the High Gallery into layered sections. Platforms display artworks below while garments appear elevated above them, almost floating within the space. One of the exhibition’s most striking details is the use of faceless mannequins fitted instead with mirrors, allowing viewers to see themselves reflected within the garments and inserted into the exhibition’s ongoing dialogue around identity and embodiment.

Reclaiming the Body

Hints of later sections appear behind the scrims. “The Abstract Body” examines body modification and silhouette manipulation from the Middle Ages through corsetry and contemporary shapewear, revealing fashion’s longstanding role in reshaping the body to fit prevailing ideals of beauty and status.

The transition into the “Pregnant and Disabled Body” sections becomes one of the exhibition’s most emotionally powerful moments. These galleries destabilize the perfection of the classical form and instead reclaim vulnerability, visibility, and difference. Historically, these bodies were often concealed or erased through clothing and social convention. Here, they are centered.

While the exhibition includes works from figures spanning antiquity to Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Andy Warhol, contemporary voices become especially impactful. Works by Yayoi Kusama, Anselm Kiefer, and Lucy Jones appear alongside garments by Willie Norris Workshop modeled on a mannequin of activist and model Aaron Rose Philip.

Philip wears a T-shirt reading “Queer Capital,” asserting visibility and presence within spaces that have historically excluded disabled bodies from aesthetic discourse. Jones’s Yellow self-portrait gazes directly back at the viewer below, confronting scrutiny head-on. These pairings create unexpected conversations between artists, designers, and models across disciplines and continents, reminding viewers how shared human experiences can transcend geography.

The disabled body is no longer concealed or excluded from aesthetic conversation. Its representation here becomes one of the strongest reflections of a generation increasingly challenging inherited standards of beauty, normalcy, and visibility.

Fashion as Political Language

Off to the side of the High Gallery, the Low Gallery offers a more intimate examination of the body beneath the skin—through flesh, blood, bone, scarring, and anatomy. The atmosphere shifts toward a more corporeal and visceral understanding of dress and identity, referencing Renaissance anatomical inquiry and Christian iconography.

Designs by Elsa Schiaparelli, Miyake Design Studio, and Jean Paul Gaultier appear alongside emerging voices like Brazilian designer Renata Buzzo. Her “Corset Anatomia” ensemble overlays beige crepe with sculptural satin internal organs, transforming anatomy itself into adornment. 

Buzzo says, “It’s amazing to be here. This work is about the three women’s deaths: political, metaphorical, and literal death. In Brazil, women are killed by their partners in toxic relationships. There are so many ways to die.” The garment becomes political as much as aesthetic, using fashion not simply as decoration but as testimony.

A Monumental New Era for the Costume Institute

Organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, the exhibition succeeds in bridging centuries of human history through the intertwined languages of art and fashion. “Costume Art” places garments and artworks from vastly different eras into conversation while also connecting contemporary designers and artists confronting systems of stigma, politics, identity, and representation today.

More than a fashion exhibition, Costume Art ultimately becomes an exploration of the human condition itself.