Costume Art

The Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition and the first show in its new permanent Condé M. Nast Galleries, located near the Great Hall. The exhibition explores the dressed body across The Met’s collection, pairing garments with artworks from different departments.

Fashion, costume history, body studies, museum collection dialogue, contemporary design, classical art, painting, sculpture, decorative arts and visual culture.

This is not a show about fashion as trend. It is about the dressed body as a central subject in art history: how clothing shapes identity, status, gender, beauty, movement, power and social meaning.

Costume Art places garments and accessories from The Costume Institute in dialogue with artworks from across The Met’s wider collection. Instead of treating fashion as something separate from “serious art,” the exhibition asks you to look at artworks through the lens of clothing and the body.

You’re watching:

• Fashion displayed beside paintings, sculpture, armour, decorative objects and ancient works
• Clothing as a way to understand the body across cultures and time
• Garments that reveal how bodies have been idealized, hidden, exaggerated, controlled or celebrated
• A museum-wide argument that fashion belongs inside the history of art
• New display strategies, including mannequins based on diverse real bodies rather than a single fashion standard.

The exhibition reportedly brings together nearly 400 objects, including garments and artworks, creating a conversation between fashion and The Met’s 5,000-year collection.