The Met reveals its 2026 Costume Institute show along with another major milestone

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the largest art gallery in North America, with more than 1.5 million objects spread across 17 curatorial departments. The one thread that connects them all? Fashion – or ‘more broadly, the dressed body,’ according to Andrew Bolton, curator of the Met’s Costume Institute.

This is the central thesis underpinning the Costume Institute’s 2026 spring exhibition ‘Costume Art,’ which will run from 10 May 2026 until 10 January 2027. The landmark annual show, whose prelude is the star-studded Met Gala every first Monday in May, will display garments from the Costume Institute’s collection alongside artefacts and objects from the greater museum as an ode to and exploration of the human body.

‘“Costume Art’ is a celebration of the body in all of its strengths and weaknesses; its resiliencies and continuities; its perfections, Its imperfections, its idiosyncrasies and commonalities; and, above all, its sublime beauty, its wondrous complexity and its glorious and miraculous diversity,’ Bolton said at a press conference this morning.

The exhibition will unfold in several sections, including chapters titled the Naked Body, the Abstract Body, the Aging Body, and the Pregnant Body, in an effort to highlight ‘those that have traditionally been overlooked,’ according to the exhibition press release.

‘Costume Art’ also promises to create surprising conversations across the Met’s collections, which comprise 5,000 years of human history. At the preview, a 16th-century engraving of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Dürer was displayed alongside a 2009 bodysuit by Walter van Beirendonck printed with a full-frontal outline of a naked man (the back reads: Get Natural, Get Naked). A glimmering silver ‘Delphos’ gown designed in 1938 by Mariano Fortuny, meanwhile, towered above a seven-inch terracotta statuette of the goddess Nike from the 5th-Century BCE.

Other works that will be on display include a bustle designed by Charles James (the subject of the Costume Institute’s 2014 exhibition); a bulging gown designed by Rei Kawakubo (the star of the 2017 show); and a delicate tulle dress designed by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy cinched at the waist with a belt made from bone-like metal pieces.

‘Although we can only show a few pairings today, they demonstrate a wide spectrum of connections that will be featured in the exhibition,’ Bolton said.

Typically, Costume Institute displays have been site-specific, taking over galleries with glittering fanfare (‘Heavenly Bodies,’ the Costume Institute's 2018 presentation, even extended uptown to the Met Cloisters). But ‘Costume Art’ marks a singular milestone: it will inaugurate a brand new, 12,000 sq ft gallery adjacent to the Met’s Great Hall.

The galleries, designed by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Paterson Rich Office, are named for Condé Montrose Nast, the 20th-century publisher whose magazine company publishes Vogue and is the project’s lead donor. By placing the Costume Institute’s galleries quite literally at the museum’s threshold, the Met is further elevating fashion’s profile within its holdings.

As Max Hollein, the Met’s director and CEO, noted, ‘We are expanding our long-standing commitment to collecting and presenting fashion within the context of our vast global collection.’