The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring 2026 Costume Institute show will “reveal the inherent relationship between clothing and the body.” No, seriously, that’s an actual line from their website. The rest of it isn’t much more promising.
Titled simply Costume Art, the exhibition will reportedly pair 200 artworks from the museum’s various collections with 200 garments and accessories. But the most important information about the show in The Met’s announcement appears below the description, in bigger and bolder font: “The exhibition is made possible by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos,” with additional support provided by Saint Laurent and Condé Nast. The latter, I’ll remind you, was rumored to become a wedding present-slash-consolation prize for Mrs. Bezos after she lost her $10.1 million bid for the original Birkin bag. Speaking of which, this exhibition will inaugurate the 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast galleries. I almost admire how transparent it all is, how shameless.
It might almost be excusable if it brought a good show. The Costume Institute is certainly capable of it — Superfine: Tailoring Black Style was a strong exhibition despite its being sponsored by Louis Vuitton. But money always comes with strings, and Jeff Bezos is one of the worst people you could be attached to.
Indeed, The Met’s exhibition description and press release might say pretty much nothing about what’ll actually be in the show, but something tells me that certain topics will be suspiciously absent: explorations of the global supply chain, including environmental impact or sweatshop and child labor. The concentration of wealth and power behind both the creation of many of the objects in the collection and the business strategies and aesthetics of luxury designers. Any designer who has publicly critiqued capitalism beyond empty platitudes. Art is always entangled in the larger forces of our world, and being beholden to them can result in far worse than stupid exhibitions.
We’ve already seen a version of this happen with another cultural heavyweight: Vogue. Anna Wintour stepped down the day before Lauren Sánchez Bezos debuted on its cover. Some speculated that she did so in protest. Others suggested that it’s the culmination of her villain arc. Neither possibility is particularly inspiring. Teen Vogue, arguably the magazine’s last earnestly political project, was effectively shuttered earlier this month. (Wintour will continue to chair the Met Gala, whose theme is typically inspired by the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, Hyperallergic confirmed in June.)
That’s all to say, I’m not expecting much from this show — The Met made its priorities clear in this press release. It’ll probably be fun, certainly Instagrammable, maybe even pretty good (though likely politically neutered). After all, the people who actually do the work of putting an exhibition together — curators, registrars, art handlers, and so many more — are a lot more similar to you and me than they are to the Bezoses, and they care about the world because they actually have to live in it.
