Next spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (commonly called the Met), one of the world’s largest and most famous art museums, will make fashion impossible to miss. The museum, home to over two million works of art spanning 5,000 years, is opening the Condé Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot space just off the Grand Hall. For the first time, the Costume Institute will be in a central location, leaving its former basement home behind and placing fashion at the heart of the museum experience.
Curator-at-large Andrew Bolton calls the move “transformative, not just for our department, but for fashion itself.” The first exhibition, Costume Art (10 May 2026 – 10 January 2027), will pair historical and contemporary garments with paintings, sculptures, and other works from the Met’s vast collection. The goal is to highlight how clothing and the human body are central to art across time.
Bolton explains that every gallery in the Met is connected by the dressed body, fashion is not separate from art; it’s a lens to explore identity, culture, and the human form. Visitors will see striking pairings, such as a 1936 Hans Bellmer sculpture alongside a 2017 Comme des Garçons dress, showing how fashion itself can be art.
The exhibition will explore a variety of themes:
The Naked Body – simplicity, natural form, and minimalism
The Classical Body – symmetry, proportion, and timeless beauty
The Ageing Body – celebrating maturity and experience
The Pregnant Body – exploring creation, transformation, and life
This inclusive approach ensures that visitors of all ages and backgrounds can see themselves reflected in the museum’s displays.
Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET)
Fashion exhibitions at the Met have a track record of drawing huge crowds. The 2018 show Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination remains the museum’s most visited exhibition, attracting over 1.6 million people.
Max Hollein, the Met’s director, calls the new galleries “a major milestone in the museum’s in the development of the Met’s profound involvement and sincere engagement with the history of fashion and its role within the broader context,” for The New York Times.
The Costume Institute, famously chaired by Anna Wintour, funds itself independently. In May 2025, it raised $31 million, highlighting its enormous cultural and financial impact. She notes that having a dedicated space it will give the department the recognition it deserves.
The galleries were designed by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of Peterson Rich Office, with executive oversight by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects. Visitors will enjoy new dining and retail areas integrated into the galleries.
Support for both the galleries and the first exhibition comes from Condé Nast and Jeff Bezos with Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who also sponsor next year’s Met Gala.
The Condé Nast Galleries redefine how the public experiences fashion. By placing garments alongside classic artworks, the Met elevates fashion from accessory to living art. Visitors will discover how clothing shapes identity, culture, history, and self-expression, making fashion a story, a statement, and an essential part of art itself.
Words are pointless. We will not reveal more. Go and visit. Walking through the Condé Nast Galleries, every garment, every texture, every silhouette tells a story. You will feel how fashion carries identity, culture, history, and emotion. Each piece connects past and present, art and life, self-expression and imagination. Seeing it in person transforms the simple act of observing into an extraordinary encounter with living art. The experience cannot be captured in words. It must be experienced, explored and felt in your own way.
