Highlights from Met’s Heavenly Bodies Blockbuster Exhibit

Highlights from Heavenly Bodies

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is a stunning visual blockbuster. It is controversial, hotly debated and the largest, 60,000 square feet, most ambitious show ever staged by the Met’s Costume Institute.

It occupies two sites, the Met on Fifth Avenue and the Cloisters in Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan. Here are some personal reflections on the Met Fifth Avenue exhibit.

Catholic Imagery and Haute Couture

Curator, Andrew Bolton, wanted to show how the inspiration and influence of Roman Catholic Imagery has shaped the creativity of designers of haute couture.

The organization of the exhibit juxtaposes fashions with religious artworks creating “conversations between art works and fashions.”

Displayed at Fifth Avenue in the Byzantine and medieval art galleries are 150 ensembles of secular clothing.

There is also an exceptional loan of 40 church vestments and papal regalia from the Vatican. These are exquisite richly, embroidered and encrusted with incredible diamonds and jewels. (Loan negotiations took two years and 12 trips to Rome.)

The Vatican loan is displayed in the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center galleries where no photography is allowed, thus unfortunately no images of the spectacular Vatican loan are included here.

Galleries of Medieval and Byzantine Art

I appoached the heart of the exhibit from the Met’s central staircase along a hallway of Byzantine art.

Here was a row of five marching mannequins wearing glittering mosaic-inspired Dolce&Gabbana dresses, a prelude to the drama beyond.

Church-Inspired Medieval Sculpture Hall.

The Byzantine gallery hallways lead to the Medieval Sculpture Hall which was inspired by the traditional layout of a European church with a nave, central aisle and two side aisles.

Here ancient and modern seem to merge and compliment one another. A 20th century dress shown by a medieval tapestry, and a case of Chanel and Verdura jewelry with crosses which were inspired by Byzantine art.

Michael Nyman‘s solem processional-style music, Time Lapse, was playing in this hall.  (It was used in the John Galliano movie). I thought it added a perfect element though Jason Farago writing in the New York Times did not. This is a controversial exhibition which creates dialogue.

Fellini’s View

Tucked away in a corner of the Sculpture Hall is a small screen showing scenes from Fellini’s Roma. It features the  “ecclestical fashion show.”  It is pure Fellini genius. I loved watching.  Roma is available on Netflix

Summing Up

Curator Andrew Bolton worked for years to create this exhibit. His main premise is that the belief system of Roman Catholicism has inspired extraordinary works of art.

I found the creativity of the display enthralling. It is dramatic, compelling, and yes, at the same time, contemplative.

With the exhibit stretching over three venues it inevitably becomes a trinity – an Ecclesiastical Pagent

Planning to Visit?

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination opened on May 7 with a star-studded glittering annual fundraising gala and runs to October 8, 2018.