The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will open 'extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday' next spring, replacing the cancelled John Galliano retrospective.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced on Thursday that its next Costume Institute exhibition, and the 2027 Met Gala that launches it, will be called 'extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday'. The show will explore how designers transform familiar garments, materials and objects, from jeans, T-shirts and puffer coats to paper, plastic and metal, so that visitors see them anew. According to ARTnews, citing the New York Times, it will include roughly 200 to 230 objects, about a third from the museum's own collection and the rest loaned or donated by fashion brands, among them Calvin Klein jeans worn by Brooke Shields and trompe l'oeil jeans by Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta.
The theme replaces a planned retrospective on British designer John Galliano, which the museum cancelled after criticism from donors and Jewish community leaders over his antisemitic and anti-Asian remarks in 2011, for which Galliano has since apologised. The Gala was also due to fall on Yom HaShoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance in Israel. ARTnews reports that Anna Wintour, the Gala's longtime chair, had earlier praised Galliano as 'courageous', but was not mentioned in the Met's announcement and, according to the Times, played no role in choosing the new theme.
Curator Andrew Bolton, speaking publicly for the first time since the cancellation, called it 'disappointing for everyone involved' and said the replacement had to be developed from scratch. He said he wanted a show with 'something new to say' about value, consumption and resourcefulness, and about what people overlook and discard. The announcement came without a press conference, and the exhibition will have no catalogue, a departure from past Costume Institute shows. The Gala, which raises funds for the Institute, traditionally takes place on the first Monday in May.
