For The Metropolitan Museum’s 150th anniversary, a huge celebration was planned with festivities to be unveiled at The Met Gala 2020. However, time seems to be standing still as the gala event has now been officially cancelled. Though, this seems almost fitting since the theme of the Met Gala 2020 is to be “About Time: Fashion and Duration.” The gala event may have been cancelled, but the museum is still planning on displaying the exhibition from October 29 to February 7, 2021.
The gala was originally set to begin May 7 showing off more than 150 pieces spotlighting the last century and a half of women fashions. Nicolas Ghesquiere of Louis Vuitton, Anna Wintour of Vogue, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Meryl Streep, and Emma Stone are all chairs or co-chairs of the gala.
The Met Gala is a fashion event held every year at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year, the museum has been shut down as a precautionary measure to help stop the spread of the virus in large, public gatherings. The museum is now planning on re-opening sometime in August. Of course, plans of reopening are always subject to change if necessary.
The decision to cancel the 2020 gala came in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The gala has been in limbo and rescheduled several times. The original announcement of the upcoming 2020 theme and excitement was made in November, 2019. This was followed by rapidly changing updates starting in March when the gala was still set to go on as planned. By mid-May, all Metropolitan Museum locations were closed due to COVID-19. There was a previous announcement that the gala was under review. Quickly, it was announced that the museum would be closed through April 4 and that gatherings of more than 50 people were halted due to CDC guidelines of public gatherings. This put the original May date in jeopardy. As of May 10, the announcement had been made that the gala would be officially called off.
The theme was the inspiration of Andrew Bolton who is the curator of the Costume Institute. He derived the idea based on a 1992 exhibition by Sally Potter film, Orlando. The film was based on Virginia Woolf’s novel. The scene he had in mind for the theme of the gala is when Tilda Swinton from the movie enters a maze wearing an 18th-century woman’s Robe a la Francaise. As she runs through the maze, her clothing begins to change to mid-19th century attire as she re-emerges into 1850s England.
The gala may have been cancelled, but there are still plans for the museum exhibition. Expect to see history unfold at the exhibition that is scheduled to begin in October for a showcase of period costumes that mark historical moments in fashion that led up to today. Also expect to see visionary forecast fashions of the future as well as everything imaginable for the years in between.