The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced new details for the Costume Institute’s Spring 2026 exhibition, Costume Art, alongside plans for the annual Met Gala fundraiser set for Monday, May 4. The exhibition will open to the public on May 10, 2026, and remain on view at The Met Fifth Avenue through January 10, 2027.
EVENTS
Costume Art will examine the centrality of the dressed body by placing garments from the Costume Institute in dialogue with works of art drawn from across the Museum’s collection. Through these juxtapositions, the exhibition will explore the indivisible connection between clothing and the body, as well as the interplay between artistic representations of the human form and fashion as an embodied art practice.
The 2026 Met Gala, formally known as The Costume Institute Benefit, will adopt the dress code “Fashion is Art.” The theme invites guests to consider fashion as an embodied art form and respond to art history’s many depictions of the dressed figure. The Gala will be co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz will co-chair the Host Committee, which includes Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Gwendoline Christie, Alex Consani, Misty Copeland, Elizabeth Debicki, Lena Dunham, Paloma Elsesser, LISA, Chloe Malle, Sam Smith, Teyana Taylor, Lauren Wasser, Anna Weyant, A’ja Wilson, Yseult, and newly announced members Adut Akech, Angela Bassett, Sinéad Burke, Rebecca Hall, Aimee Mullins, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald, and Chase Sui Wonders. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos will serve as Honorary Chairs and lead sponsors for both the Gala and the exhibition.
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The exhibition will inaugurate the Museum’s nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, located adjacent to the Great Hall. The space is named in recognition of a significant lead gift from the late Condé M. Nast’s organization. Additional contributions toward the renovation have been provided by Thom Browne, Michael Kors and Lance Le Pere, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Tory Burch LLC, Nancy C. and Richard R. Rogers, and Amy Griffin and John Griffin. The new galleries have been designed by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of the Brooklyn-based architecture firm Peterson Rich Office.
Costume Art will feature nearly 400 objects spanning centuries. The exhibition will be organized into thematic body types that appear throughout art history, including the “Naked Body,” the “Classical Body,” the “Pregnant Body,” and the “Aging Body,” as well as categories such as the “Anatomical Body” and the “Mortal Body.” Garments and artworks will share platforms and pedestals to emphasize equivalency between artistic media and bodily representations. Mannequins will feature polished steel heads created by artist Samar Hejazi, encouraging visitors to see themselves reflected in the garments and body types on view.
Among the highlighted pairings are a 2022–23 suit by Glenn Martens for Y/Project in collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier shown alongside a 1st–2nd century CE marble statue of Diadoumenos; an 1883 walking dress displayed with Georges Seurat’s 1884 Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; a 1997–98 ensemble by Comme des Garçons paired with Max Weber’s 1917 Figure in Rotation; and a 2023 dress by Dilara Findikoglu presented with an 1868 mourning brooch by Tiffany & Co.
The exhibition is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, with support from Stephanie Kramer, Ayaka Iida, and Emily Mushaben. An illustrated catalogue written by Bolton will accompany the show, featuring imagery by Julie Wolfe, photographer Paul Westlake, and Nathalie Agussol, with an introduction by Dr. Llewellyn Negrin and an epilogue by Andrew Solomon. The publication will be released by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed internationally by Yale University Press, with a limited-edition deluxe version available exclusively at The Met Store.
