The Met Gala is coming to Bloomsbury. The British Museum announced this weekend it will hold its own version of the 77-year-old New York haute-couture event, organised by Vogue and held in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The New York Times has called the New York Met Gala “fashion’s biggest night”. Celebrities and fashion brands are desperate to attend. Tickets last year cost $75,000 per guest. Having a UK version sounds like a great idea – unfortunately, the British Museum is the wrong place for it.
Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its doors to the public on March 30, 1880, it focused on the cultural scene of New York, a society obsessed with appearances and fashion. (New York fashion rules were stringent: in Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel The Age of Innocence, all European-imported dresses must rest in the armoire for at least a year, so that the wearer doesn’t look too forward or modern.)
In 1948, the Met began its annual gala where the rich and famous could engage in some philanthropy while separating themselves from other less well-off New Yorkers. Formally called the Costume Institute Benefit, the Met Gala was supported from its inception by Vogue magazine. All the profits from the Gala went towards the Costume Institute, a division of the museum which now holds 33,000 objects representing seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories.
Meanwhile, the British Museum spent its early years focused on receiving donations from the Greek and Egyptian excavation sites. It lacks a department dedicated to fashion and a supporting trend-setting voice in the fashion industry. The Brit Gala is said to have been working with luxury brands for its event in October, but the details of these brands remain unknown.
The British Museum has told the Times that the ball is set to “celebrate the London cultural scene”. But while its extensive and impressive collections have some London artefacts, such as its Roman London display, the purpose of the museum is to bring other cultures and their histories to London – not to celebrate the city.
The Manhattan-based Met features as the backdrop of glossy editorial shoots and was the hang-out place for New York’s rich and fashionable teenagers of Gossip Girl. It’s hard to imagine a British TV show using the British Museum to make its characters look cool.
Like most museums in the UK, the British museum has faced huge state funding cuts in the past 15 years. But a Brit Gala won’t save it. The money raised would help fund “international partnerships” – highly likely to be payments for artefact loans – rather than being used for the museum’s redevelopment, which is estimated to cross £1bn.
For an exclusive night of haute couture in London, the V&A in South Kensington would have been a better option. It’s smaller, sure, but the V&A’s exhibits are full of fashion and culture that do a much better job of celebrating “the London cultural scene”. As the Met’s Costume Institute opens its spring season, it presents a historical and cultural examination of black American style over the last three hundred years. A new V&A exhibition promotes disabled, deaf and neurodivergent designers that shape contemporary culture; the floor below houses the legacy of Cartier’s art and design in the Sainsbury Gallery.
A British Met Gala is an excellent opportunity to celebrate British fashion and culture and bring in revenue for our failing institutions. If only it wasn’t at the British Museum.
[Further reading: D4vd and the parasitic cruelty of internet sleuths]
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