Exploring The Met's New "Costume Art" Exhibit

0:00 We love you.

0:02 Oh my gosh.

0:04 Beyonce.

0:05 Be Tiana.

0:06 Sam, is this Erte?

0:08 Is it Erte?

0:09 Friends.

0:16 Before the couture and the chaos It is, you know, always a very exciting moment.

0:21 It's a big celebration for creativity, for the arts, for fashion,

0:25 for New York City, and certainly also for the museum.

0:28 Met director Max Holine met us on a Wednesday

0:30 in a closed museum to show us what they've been working on.

0:34 What is the lead time to developing an exhibit like this?

0:37 Is it year by year, are you looking many years ahead?

0:39 So it took us eight years, to get this show together.

0:42 It wasn't that we were thinking about eight years how how do we do it,

0:45 but really to get all these important loans to one place,

0:48 that's really the challenge.

0:49 So the preparation for these shows usually take more or less,

0:54 I don't know, two years.

0:56 And importantly about this exhibition, it's only Met collection.

0:59 So So you don't have any loans.

1:01 This is all your income.

1:02 It's all from Met collection.

1:04 The Met actually is one of the biggest and most profound collections of fashion.

1:08 So we have 37,000 garments here.

1:11 Fashion is not only one of the really

1:14 complex ways of expressing human creativity.

1:17 It's also something that Bessie is so attuned to the current time,

1:23 but it is also something very difficult to collect.

1:26 It's very perishable.

1:27 Right?

1:28 It it's perishable.

1:29 It's it takes up a lot of space.

1:31 The Met Gala provides the the funds that are necessary to run a department,

1:36 to run a collection, really,

1:38 also ample service of preservation of fashion history for our communities.

1:43 Can we go take a look?

1:43 Please.

1:44 Come.

1:44 Like everywhere in Manhattan, real estate is at a premium.

1:47 The museum can't expand anymore into Central Park,

1:50 so it has to find creative ways to carve

1:52 out new gallery space within the preexisting footprint.

1:56 This was the retail store.

1:58 This was the gift shop.

1:59 Yeah.

2:00 This was the gift shop.

2:01 So now enter through the gift shop,

2:03 but we actually changed the gift shop into grand exhibition galleries.

2:07 Because you are the first one to see the new

2:10 galleries of the These are all objects from the Met's collection.

2:13 It's a show that's like a manifesto.

2:15 It's called costume art.

2:17 And what it tells you is the story of the importance of the dressed body,

2:22 of fashion in art, in art history.

2:24 So on the one hand, you see fantastic costumes, but on the other hand,

2:29 you also see how all the other artworks in our museum and how

2:34 on the other hand also other art influences fashion and vice versa.

2:38 But fashion can also be kind of political.

2:40 Right?

2:40 Of course.

2:41 It's always also a statement of expression of power.

2:43 Fashion is so fascinating because it's it's probably the art

2:46 form that's kind of responds so immediately to our current times.

2:50 I imagine it's unique in that you

2:51 have curators from different expertises working

2:53 together in a way that they probably wouldn't otherwise that you would have.

2:56 We have a 140 curators working here.

2:59 Everyone is very specialized in their area.

3:02 And so we need to create more opportunities for for them

3:06 and for different areas to be in dialogue, in conversation.

3:09 We want to have one inspire the other.

3:12 David, this is menswear.

3:13 Yes.

3:13 Could wear that on set.

3:15 Well, you should take inspiration of this.

3:17 Not only about what you want to look at, but, yes, what you should need to wear.

3:22 Right?

3:22 That's push him sartorially, and I'm gonna tell him it's art,

3:24 so we have to do it.

3:25 We need.

3:26 But the Costume Institute is only a small piece of the bigger picture.

3:30 After struggling to survive COVID and the resulting

3:32 hit to both patrons and patronage,

3:34 last year, the Met had its highest attendance since 2019.

3:39 And we have, 6,300,000 visitors a year.

3:42 We are currently undergoing a total kind of overhaul

3:46 of about a quarter of our entire system.

3:49 You're the director.

3:50 You're the CEO as well.

3:52 And I'm curious when it comes to benefactors,

3:54 is there more reluctance now because

3:56 of the broader cultural undertones that we have?

3:59 Or Even just the economy.

4:00 Yeah.

4:01 People less willing to to give or to engage?

4:03 So, we've seen quite the opposite.

4:05 I think you've see you see this museum being enormously supported,

4:09 of course, by philanthropy.

4:10 So I think that there are various ways that this museum serves,

4:14 its audiences, its communities, and I think broader purposes that we all care

4:18 about no matter where you are on the political spectrum.

4:21 That means investing 1,500,000,000 over the next decade,

4:24 building out new galleries and exhibits to be more inclusive across genres,

4:29 geography, and time.

4:31 It is very important to not have, so to see,

4:34 only Greek and Roman and European front and center,

4:38 but really apply the same care, apply the same grandeur,

4:41 and the same rigor to all the all the other areas.

4:46 Placing a bust from Northern Pakistan next to an old European

4:50 master and displaying a Congolese power figure not as an ethnographic artifact,

4:54 but as a significant work unto itself.

4:56 I think it's also important to see that we sometimes

4:59 walk through these galleries and think that this is like archaeology,

5:02 but a lot of this is is contemporary art.

5:05 Can you just speak to what you have in store

5:07 with the museum here over the next decade or so?

5:10 So we we reopened the European paintings galleries.

5:13 We reopened the Rockefeller Wing just last year.

5:18 We will open the new costume institute galleries in a couple of days.

5:22 Next year, we will reopen our ancient West Asia galleries

5:26 and then also our new wing for modern contemporary art.

5:29 That alone is a a massive project, construction of $600,000,000.

5:35 Is the new footprint of the museum are you trying to get people

5:37 to have those conversations in real time as they move through the museum?

5:40 That's exactly right.

5:41 So the the whole museum becomes, in that way, more fluid.

5:44 We really show how, in that sense,

5:47 African art is so connected to European art in that context, etcetera.

5:50 Who who are those who are coming to the Met Museum in the year 2026?

5:54 Our average age currently is 35.

5:56 We have people from the very young age to the end of their life,

6:01 but it basically shows you the diversity of our audience.

6:03 I mean, our local visitorship is enormously strong.

6:06 And then, of course, domestic and international tourism.

6:11 Last Monday's gala raised $42,000,000 to help

6:14 fund not just the costume institute,

6:16 but museum programming and activities for all

6:19 its visitors no matter what they wear.

6:22 Why was now a good time for a statement about the importance of fashion?

6:26 I think that fashion has been part of the Met's

6:29 history and the Met's institution for such a long time.

6:33 It responds very quickly to what's going on in the world,

6:36 but how contemporary culture feels these days.

6:38 So it's actually sometimes faster and more immediate than paintings,

6:42 sculpture, drawing, and I loved it.