The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion Is On View


2009-05-06
The spring 2009 exhibition The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is on view from May 6–August 9, 2009 at Museum's second-floor Tisch Galleries. The exhibition explores the reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty, focusing on iconic fashion models in the historical period of 1947 to 1997 and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras. Featured are haute couture and ready-to-wear masterworks accompanied by fashion photography and video footage of models who epitomized their epochs. Fashion editorial, advertising, and runway photography plus large- scale projections from feature films are used throughout the galleries to contextualize the fashion era. The exhibition has been made possible by Marc Jacobs along with support from by Condé Nast. A book, The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, written by Harold Koda and Kohle Yohannan, accompanies the exhibition. It is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press – $50 for the hardcover; and, at Met locations (including metmuseum.org), $35 for a paperback edition.