The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will debut its spring 2026 exhibition, “Costume Art,” on May 10, preceded by the Met Gala on May 4. The exhibition explores the dressed body in all forms—nude, pregnant, plus-size, disabled, aging, and internal—and features fashion designer Renata Buzzo’s hand-stitched “Corset Anatomia” from her 2024 collection “The Body.” Buzzo was personally selected by curator Andrew Bolton and donated her pieces. The exhibition will be housed in the new Condé M. Nast Galleries, an 11,500-square-foot space that will make fashion galleries the first thing visitors see upon entering the Great Hall. The Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, raised a record $31 million in 2025 and will follow the dress code “Fashion is Art.”
This matters because the exhibition and gala signal a major institutional shift at The Met, placing fashion front and center as a primary artistic medium, directly integrated with the museum’s 5,000-year art collection. The new gallery space repositions fashion as a core curatorial priority, potentially influencing how other major museums approach fashion exhibitions. The inclusion of diverse body types and internal anatomy challenges traditional fashion norms, while the star-studded gala and record fundraising underscore the event’s cultural and financial significance for the art world.