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The show must go on! After canceling the in-person event in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Met Gala is coming back! The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its highly anticipated annual fashion celebration would return as a two-part exhibition.
The gala will host guests in an intimate event on September 13, 2021, and months later, will hold a larger event on May 2, 2022. The first part will be open to the public on September 18 under the name “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” as a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the museum’s Costume Institute. The exhibition will “explore a modern vocabulary of American fashion,” according to the museum.
For the second part, the museum will showcase “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” starting May 5, 2022. The exhibit will explore American fashion in-depth, and the Met will be “presenting narratives that relate to the complex and layered histories of those spaces.”
“Over the past year, because of the pandemic, the connections to our homes have become more emotional, as have those to our clothes,” exhibit curator Andrew Bolton said in a statement. “For American fashion, this has meant an increased emphasis on sentiment over practicality.”
According to Bolton, the first part will establish “a modern vocabulary of American fashion based on the expressive qualities of clothing as well as deeper associations with issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion.” While Part Two will “further investigate the evolving language of American fashion through a series of collaborations with American film directors who will visualize the unfinished stories inherent in The Met’s period rooms.”
“In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” and “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” will be open until September 5, 2022, until the museum indicates otherwise.