The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the theme of The Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition, whose opening night, the famous Met Gala, is considered the social event of the year for New York.

The exhibition is titled "Costume Art" and it will examine the centrality of the dressed body, juxtaposing objects from across the Museum’s vast collection with historical and contemporary garments from The Costume Institute.

The exhibition will inaugurate major new Galleries adjacent to the Great Hall, which will display The Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition. In recognition of a significant lead gift from Condé Nast, the nearly 12,000-square-foot space will be named for the company’s founder, the late Condé M. Nast. Additional generous contributions toward the renovation are provided by Thom Browne, Michael Kors, and Lance Le Pere. Further support is provided by Met Trustee Aerin Lauder, Tory Burch LLC, Nancy C. and Richard R. Rogers, as well as Met Trustee Amy Griffin and John Griffin.

Focusing primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present, Costume Art will be organized into a series of thematic body types that reflect their ubiquity and endurance through time and space. These comparisons will highlight the inextricable relationship between clothing and the body and reveal that artistic representations of the body are shaped by the garments that clothe them and that the garments, in turn, are shaped by the bodies that they clothe. The show will be on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from May 10, 2026, through January 10, 2027.

To celebrate the opening of the spring 2026 exhibition, The Costume Institute Benefit (also known as The Met Gala) will take place on Monday, May 4. The event’s co-chairs and honorary chairs will be announced in the coming months, along with members of the Gala Host Committee. The Met Gala® takes place annually on the first Monday in May. The funds raised provide The Costume Institute with its primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations, as well as support other Museum activities.

Costume Art will present a series of thematic body types, ranging from those that are pervasive across The Museum, such as the “Naked Body” and the “Classical Body,” to those that have traditionally been overlooked, such as the “Pregnant Body” and the “Aging Body”, to those that reflect shared bodily characteristics and experiences, such as the “Anatomical Body” and the “Mortal Body.” Pairings between fashions and artworks will present a spectrum of connections: from the formal to the conceptual, the aesthetic to the political, the individual to the universal, the illustrative to the symbolic, and the playful to the profound. The objects will be displayed on traditional pedestals and platforms commonly used by art museums, but in contrast to how they have been used to convey value, status, and significance, in Costume Art these physical structures will be employed in Costume Art to represent equivalency between types of artworks and types of bodies.

n addition to The Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition, the Condé M. Nast Galleries will at times also display shows from the Museum’s other curatorial departments, including those that explore the intersection of fashion and art. The Costume Art exhibition and the Galleries are designed by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich of the Brooklyn-based architecture firm Peterson Rich Office (PRO). Additionally, artist Samar Hejazi will create bespoke heads for the show’s mannequins.

Costume Art
May 10, 2026 - January 10, 2027
The Met Fifth Avenue
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028