The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open the Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Grand Hall, next spring. The new galleries will become the permanent home for the annual Costume Institute exhibition, replacing the museum's largest retail space. The inaugural show, "Costume Art" (10 May 2026–10 January 2027), will pair paintings, sculptures, and other art objects with historical and contemporary garments, emphasizing the dressed body as a central theme across the museum's collections. The move follows the record-breaking success of 2018's "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which drew over 1.6 million visitors.
The new location marks a major institutional shift, elevating fashion from a peripheral department to a prominent position at the museum's main entrance. Curator Andrew Bolton argues that fashion has long been treated as a "stepchild" within art museums, but the dressed body is actually a unifying thread across all galleries. The Costume Institute, once a standalone institution absorbed by the Met in 1946, has historically been housed in a lower level. The move reflects both the growing acceptance of fashion as an art form and the immense popularity of fashion exhibitions, which have become major audience drivers for museums worldwide. The galleries are named after Condé Nast in honor of a gift from the publishing company, and the project represents a professional victory for Anna Wintour, who chairs the Costume Institute's Met Gala fundraiser.