The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its spring 2026 Costume Institute exhibition, titled "Costume Art," which will explore the relationship between fashion and the dressed body within the context of visual art history. Curator Andrew Bolton explained that the show aims to correct the longstanding tendency to separate fashion from the body in order to elevate it to art. The exhibition will inaugurate the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast galleries and will pair historical and contemporary garments with paintings, drawings, and objects from across the museum's 16 curatorial departments, spanning 5,000 years.
This exhibition matters because it represents a major institutional and financial commitment by the Met to reframe fashion as an embodied art form, challenging the traditional hierarchy that has often marginalized fashion in art museums. The Costume Institute's blockbuster shows, such as "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" (the most-visited exhibition in Met history), have proven to be enormous tourist draws, and this new exhibition could further solidify fashion's place in the art world. By centering the dressed body and including rarely celebrated forms like pregnant or aging bodies, "Costume Art" also signals a shift toward more inclusive and critically engaged fashion curation.