![]() ![]() Given that the Costume Institute has the world’s largest holdings of important dress objects, how did Bolton resist going in to extract anything-just one outfit! -pre-Twentieth century? Or, even if the remit is to show only contemporary fashion (though, why?), surely they could have pulled more from those deep and unavailable (even to researchers) archives: a Mainbocher, perhaps? A Galanos? The Costume Institute owns over 200 of each. The only hint that Andrew Bolton’s neck might be slightly clammy with Anna Wintour’s breath is that the actual clothes in Heavenly Bodies are straight out of Vogue, tasteful in the Wintour way, gorgeous, unsurprising and straight off the runway. What is less normal is that this museum has one trustee, the one with her name over the door since 2014, with power over the content not just of her gala, but apparently, of the show itself. Patronage is how all museums operate, especially in the United States. This doesn’t matter: the gala funds the show. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if most readers of the Vogue bookazine Inside the Met Gala ($14.99 in the shop) had no idea the “East Coast Oscars,” where SJP had the nativity on her head and Zendaya was Joan of Arc, had an exhibition attached. A lot of the Catholic outrage was actually triggered by that gala, by pregnant Cardi B as the Virgin Mary and Rihanna’s Maison Margiela mini-and-a-mitre, but that’s only to be expected: show and gala are intimately intertwined. ![]() ![]() Unsurprisingly, this loan, and the entire sacred/profane idea, has resulted in Catholic chatter (“ …tasteless, indecent, and blasphemous fashion items,” a “ frivolous, ignorant and at times sacrilegious extravaganza…pointlessly offensive to believers…“), though some criticism has been assuaged by the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s, presence at the Met Gala: the infamous “First Monday in May,” –which is a DVD you can buy in the shop. ![]() In The Met’s own words, the exhibition –the fifth by Andrew Bolton (the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute)– “speaks to religion’s enduring and divine imprint on art and design.” It is “the first collaboration between the Vatican and The Costume Institute,” presenting “masterworks of religious art in direct dialogue with fashion… as the exhibition unfolds in a veritable pilgrimage.” It was years in the making, entailing ten Vatican visits by Bolton to secure his headline coup: an unprecendented loan of 41 liturgical vestments and accessories from the Sistine Chapel Sacristy. But tour the show without Instagram goggles, and Heavenly Bodies can be clearly read as an ethical crisis in both museum and fashion worlds, a story about patronage and branding, elitism, exclusion and disconnection. But among the laudatory coverage-rightfully: the show is magnificent, opulent, scholarly, impressive-there’s not much out there, from the fashion perspective, to counter the glamour, which is being swallowed whole and regurgitated across every social platform. Instead, there are, basically, two: one among the Church and the other among Anna Wintour. The sign at the shop by the entrance of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination promises “must-have items that continue the conversation.” But, after spending many hours in all three sections (in The Met’s galleries, the Anna Wintour Costume Center, and The Cloisters) of The Met Costume Institute’s spring show, I’m wondering: what is this conversation? And who is having it? The May show is the splashiest and grandest in the world’s museum fashion calendar, and Heavenly Bodies is The Met’s biggest ever: there should be lots of conversations among anyone with a passing interest in clothes. ![]()
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