Fashion Finally Enters Met's Main Hall

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has been relocated from the basement to a prominent 12,000-square-foot permanent space, the Condé M. Nast galleries, now situated near the Great Hall. This significant change marks a turning point, positioning fashion as the first exhibit visitors encounter upon entering the museum.

This elevated status acknowledges fashion's power to draw crowds, evident in the Costume Institute's dominance among the Met's most-visited exhibitions. The newly opened "Costume Art" exhibition, which inaugurates the space, serves to both highlight this role and argue for fashion's overdue integration into the core of art institutions.

The exhibition argues that fashion, or "the dressed body," acts as a crucial link across the Met's diverse departments. It achieves this by pairing approximately 200 garments and accessories with an equal number of artworks from various collections, illustrating fashion's presence in every artistic discipline and time period.

This new display strategy, emphasizing the body as the unifying principle, moves beyond traditional justifications for fashion as art. It suggests that fashion's intrinsic connection to the body, and its capacity to shape perception, is what makes it central to all art practices.

The exhibition, which opened on May 10, 2026, and runs until January 10, 2027, also introduces new mannequins designed to represent a wider range of body types, a departure from previous unrealistic standards. This reflects a broader shift in how fashion is presented and understood within major art institutions.