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What to know about this year’s celebration, including the return of a superstar last seen on the Met carpet 10 years ago.
The first Monday in May — a.k.a. the date of the Met Gala, a.k.a. the party of the year, a.k.a. the Oscars of the East Coast — is coming. That alone should be enough to get everyone’s people-watching juices flowing. The clothes! The celebrities! The money! The chance to comment knowingly on all of the above while in your pajamas.
But this Met Gala is not just any old Met Gala. This Met Gala is celebrating both the next big Costume Institute show and the Costume Institute’s new home: the Condé M. Nast Galleries. Housed in the 11,500-square-foot space that used to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop, the fashion galleries will now be the first thing visitors see when they walk into the Great Hall.
In other words: an undeniable declaration that fashion deserves a prime place in the most storied of fine arts institutions.
Wait — that sounds like a big deal.
It is. Ever since the Museum of Costume Art merged with the Met in 1946 and became the Costume Institute, the C.I. has been relegated to the Met’s basement, squished into a cramped, 4,300-square-foot gallery space, like a sort of embarrassing relative. There was no more telling symbol of the fact that fashion was never really considered the aesthetic equivalent of, say, painting or sculpture.
When the Costume Institute wanted to put on its big annual exhibition, it had to either borrow space from other galleries or use a temporary exhibition space, which limited how long its shows could be open. Now it has a large, permanent space of its own, and the exhibition will be up for a full nine months, a development definitely worth celebrating. Maybe that’s why Beyoncé agreed to be a host.
Beyoncé?!
She is an official co-chair of the gala, along with Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Condé Nast’s chief content officer, Anna Wintour, the woman most responsible for making the Met Gala what it is. This will be the first time Beyoncé has graced a Met Gala with her presence in a decade. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are the honorary chairs, providing the main source of funding for the exhibition and the party itself.
