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Next Best Thing to Being There

on May 20, 2010 – 3:07 am

Unable to visit the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to experience one of the most visually dramatic exhibitions of women’s antique and vintage fashion? Try the next best thing to being there!

With the links provided below, take pleasure in viewing the museum’s extraordinary and imaginative period settings from the late Gilded Age to mid-century Hollywood.

The American Women: Fashioning a National Identity exhibition abstains from displaying its 80 gowns and ensembles as art objects in a sterile climate-controlled environment. Instead the visitor is visually and sensually transported back in time to the era in which the extravagant costumes were first slipped on.

Hand-painted murals designed by Hollywood’s Nathan Crowley transport the viewer to Mrs. Astor’s lavish Victorian ballroom, a Gibson Girl resort-like seaside, a Tiffany stained-glass window estate, and other period inspired vignettes. As described by the New York Times, this exhibition is “one long atmospheric swoon.”

Video: Video of gallery views of the exhibition entertain and delight.

Flickr Slideshow: Fifteen image slideshow featuring gallery views of the extraordinary period settings.

Collection Database: List of color photographs of works in exhibition.

[Photograph by Alex Hills. The Metropolitan Museum of Art]

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