Costume Art at The Met: When Pairings Go Wrong

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibition Costume Art fills roughly 200 garments into the Costume Institute's new Condé M. Nast Galleries — nearly 12,000 square feet of Grand Hall-adjacent space — and still struggles to explain what it is about.

The show's stated task, per the museum's website, is "reveal[ing] the inherent relationship between clothing and the body." That proclamation is broad to the point of emptiness. Clothing relates to the body — and The Met's artworks attest to it. From there, the exhibition organizes itself into body typologies:

• "Naked and Nude Body"
• "Anatomical Body"
• "Abstract Body"
• "Aging Body"
• "Mortal Body"
• "Epidermal Body"
• "Pregnant Body" and "Reclaimed Body"

The framing implicitly casts the Costume Institute as the museum's beating heart, with the rest of the collection reduced to evidence for fashion's centrality.

What works?

Some pairings do land. Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute's Curator in Charge, told The Art Newspaper that the show lets visitors experience the objects "through the lens of fashion, so the art becomes embodied." Diaphanous Grecian-style gowns coupled with ancient Greek vessels make that case cleanly.

What falls apart?

Many other correspondences read as forced, superficial, or questionable. Chet Lo, who provided fabric swatches and audio descriptions for blind and low-vision guests at his Spring 2025 collection show, is juxtaposed with Picasso's "The Blind Man's Meal" (1903). Nearby, a limestone votive ear inscribed "I belong to a deaf person" (4th–3rd century BCE) accompanies Justin Dougan-Leblanc's "Deaf Dysmorphia" ensemble (2023) — Dougan-Leblanc is deaf.

The criticism here is precise: if inclusiveness were the priority, why not exhibit artists who actually live with blindness and deafness, such as Emilie Louise Gossiaux or Christine Sun Kim? The Lo-Picasso pairing instead draws constant selfies from visitors. Notably, this gallery space was once a gift shop.

Elsewhere, a section titled "Pregnant Body" includes several works by cis men, as does "Reclaimed Body." That section couples Michaela Stark's body-binding outfit "Twisted" (2026) with a Hans Bellmer photograph of one of his faceless, limbless poupée doll sculptures — a pairing that raises more questions about curation than it answers about embodiment.

Other juxtapositions include Xander Zhou's "Ensemble" (spring/summer 2019) beside Hiroko Okada's "Future Plan #2" (2003).

What does this change for The Met?

The galleries are new, the square footage is real, and the budget behind the show is evident. What remains unproven is the thesis. A museum that positions its costume department as the interpretive key to its entire collection needs pairings that hold up under scrutiny; too many here collapse at the label. Until the Costume Institute tightens its curatorial logic, its claim to be The Met's beating heart stays exactly that — a claim.