The Costume Institute's fall 2023 exhibition will explore the creativity and artistic legacy of women fashion designers from The Met’s permanent collection, tracing a lineage of makers from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day by highlighting celebrated designers, new voices, and forgotten histories alike.

Women Dressing Women will feature the work of over seventy womenswear designers, spanning ca. 1910 to 2022, including French haute couture from houses such as Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Madeleine Vionnet, to American makers like Ann Lowe, Claire McCardell, and Isabel Toledo, along with contemporary designs by Iris van Herpen, Rei Kawakubo, Anifa Mvuemba, and Simone Rocha.

Photo: Claire McCardell wearing her “Future dress” (detail), 1945. Photo by Erwin Blumenfeld. © The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld 2023

Met Museum
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This exhibition traces the evolution of Harold Cohen’s Aaron, the earliest artificial intelligence (AI) program for artmaking. Leaving behind his practice as an established painter in London, Cohen (1928–2016) conceived the software in the late 1960s at the University of California, San Diego, and named it Aaron in the early 1970s. The title alludes to the biblical figure anointed as speaker for his brother Moses, and questions how artistic creation is often glorified as a form of communication with the divine. Cohen understood his work with Aaron to be a collaboration, and he devoted his life to exploring the potential of artificial intelligence to translate an artist’s knowledge and process into code.

Over the decades the Aaron software has created images meant to be executed by drawing and painting devices, as well as visuals for display on monitors or as projections. To generate Aaron's output, Cohen built his own plotters and painting machines, which interpret commands from a computer to make line drawings on paper with automated pens and add color with brushes. This exhibition not only features Aaron's works but also highlights the software as the central creative force behind them through screen-based versions of the program and drawings made by plotters operating live in the gallery.

This exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, curator of digital art, with David Lisbon, curatorial assistant.

Photo: Harold Cohen, Aaron Kcat, 2001.

Whitney Museum of American Art
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