| The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Must See For Fashion and Art Lovers |
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| Fashion |
| Written by Wendy Innes |
| Saturday, 20 June 2009 00:00 |
 NEW YORK In January 2009, the Brooklyn Museum, known for its collection of over 20,000 objects pertaining directly to costumes formed a sharing partnership with the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The result has the potential to be the fashion equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria.According to Brooklyn Museum Director, Dr. Arnold Lehman, ““For over a decade— and as a guiding principle—the Brooklyn Museum’s Trustees and senior management have set the highest priority on insuring the appropriate environment, exemplary stewardship, and broad access to this invaluable and fragile resource. The Costume Institute at the Met, as well as the Museum as an entity already derive world renown for being an incredible collection of artifacts on the world’s greatest stage, New York City. Director Lehman and the trustees of the Brooklyn collection will at once add more color to this collection and expose their own to an entirely new set of eyes that may otherwise have been unfamiliar with their works. Further, their innovations will enable the world to view this collection in addition to those who venture to the streets of New York. Through a roughly $4 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum has just completed a 3 year photographic documentation of their artifacts that, “will also be made internationally available digitally through ARTstor, an online initiative (created by the Mellon Foundation) that provides access to art images and related data for scholarly and not-for-profit educational use.” The Costume Institute already provides a similar service for their pieces. In their joint press release, the Metropolitan Museum Director Phillipe de Montabello said, “That two great New York institutions, after decades of collecting costume in parallel, are now joining together to combine their resources into the single largest and most comprehensive costume collection in the world, is a landmark event indeed. We thank Arnold Lehman for his vision in forging this collaboration between the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan, and the Trustees of the Brooklyn Museum for their exceptional support. It is a partnership that will enlighten and engage scholars, students, and the public of both institutions for generations to come.” Obviously, this is a major acquisition for both museums, and something that the art world and the rest of society can appreciate for years to come. The official unveiling will take place at the Met’s annual 2010 gala. The partnership will include Brooklyn Museum’s 23,000+ pieces and The Costume Institute’s 31,000+ artifacts, making it the largest single collection of fashion history in the world. Brooklyn’s collection of masterpieces by Christian Dior, Worth, McCardell, and Lanvin will blend well with the Met’s international collection of period outfits from Tudor England to the present. In recent decades with few exceptions, the museum industry has become a cultural symbol of collections of curiosities, a place to take your child on the weekend to get them out from in front of the television. In the best of cities, museums have also become a place where the cultural elite derive self gratification from “hanging out” with like mind. Consequently, it is a breath of fresh air to see a partnership like this on such a grand scale. Dr. Lehman, and Directors Montebello and Thomas Campbell (incoming Met director) have positioned themselves to show the museum culture how to return to its roots. Vast collections of artifacts in a museum form have become cultural because above all, they are meant to be scholastic. The purpose of a museum is to incite and provoke thought by members of academia and by the public at large. The present merging of these collections, along with the Mellon Foundation’s use of new technology will enable the next generation of fashion designers to study the works of the previous masters. In essence, this is the fashion academic’s equivalent to combining the painted masterpieces in the Metropolitan with the works in the Louvre and the Guggenheim. It is for this expressed purpose that once on display, anyone who dares enter the world of fashion and costuming should make a trip to the new “Mecca” of the industry. Even day, the Costume Institute has 1620’s French Doublets mingling in the same halls with works from 1930’s Valentia and “Coco” Chanel. Any artist looking for inspiration need only navigate to the Met’s website to view the highlights of their artifacts. In fashion, as it is with any profession, it is impossible to understand the present and future trends and conditions without observing its past. The Costume Institute at the Met allows the budding designer to do this on a grand scale. In addition to its regular collection, the museum runs exhibitions that touch on every possible concern to the artist, from the collections of Chanel and Poiret to fantasy style costuming like those found in science fiction and comic books. After carefully considering various alternatives, we concluded that we could best accomplish our goals by sharing the collection with an institution whose experience with a similarly rich collection is already exceptional, and where the combination of these two outstanding collections would contribute to a deeper understanding of Western culture.” The current exhibition, called “The Model as Muse”, attempts to correlate the embodiment of fashion through 20th century models and their effect of the industry itself. With photography and cinema in particular, fashion as become defined less by the designer and more by the person wearing the style. Designers have become increasing popular by their ability to induce movie stars to wear their ensembles and this has translated to the artist catering the work to the canvas, as opposed to molding the canvas to fit the art. As such, the study highlights the new process of designing to meet the expectations of the model juxtaposed to convincing the model to wear the fashion. The ensuing trends in fashion that have emerged show this internationally on a daily basis. This is the joy of the Costume Institute. The public can view those curiosities, while the budding designers can pick apart the past and continue to bring new art and form to the table with great success. Bookmark us: 
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| Last Updated on Friday, 21 August 2009 20:01 |