Anna Wintour Costume Center

History

In 1902, Irene and Alice Lewisohn became teenage heiresses and decided to join other wealthy New York friends in community work. They began to spend time at the Henry Street Settlement House in New York, a community center devoted to the integration of immigrant families and since 1909 host to summer camps for girls and boys from underprivileged New York families. Alice, who acted in plays herself, began working as a drama teacher, while Irene devoted herself to dance productions. While at the Settlement House they also began to present performances and in 1915, the sisters joined Rita Wallach Morgenthau to build and found the Neighborhood Playhouse on the corner of Grand and Pitt Streets, where between 1915 and 1927, the theater presented plays by Shaw, Joyce, and Dunsany.

Now called the Abrons Arts Center, the theater continues to showcase many Settlement arts programs. Aline Bernstein served her apprenticeship there from 1915-1924 designing costumes and stage sets. From 1928 the four women moved their operations to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre at 340 East 54th Street. There it became an actor training school and students were offered a two-year program formal drama and dance training to become professionals. Both Gregory Peck and Anna Sokolow were students of Martha Graham there.

During their years of running the school theatre and producing plays, a body of knowledge was formed about acting, theater production, and costume, set and stage design. Eventually Irene opened a home for her library called the Museum of Costume Art on Fifth Avenue in 1937. Aline Bernstein helped her with the collection and presentation. After the war in 1946 it moved to the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1960 the two organizations merged, and the Met is now home to the Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library.

Since 1946, with help from the fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, the institute has hosted the annual Met Gala, to raise money for operating expenses.

In 2008, the American Costume Collection of the Brooklyn Museum merged into the Costume Institute, a cost-saving scheme coming after years of close collaboration between the two organizations. The collection of the Brooklyn museum is older, having been formed from private donations by former New York high society personalities, beginning with the donation in 1903 of an 1892 cream crepe dress worn by Kate Mallory Williams at her graduation from Brooklyn Heights Seminary. Prior to the move, 23,500 objects from the Brooklyn collection were digitized and these images are now shared by both organizations. At the time of the merger, the Met costume collection consisted of 31,000 objects from the 17th-century onwards. The opening exhibition in 2014 featured work by British-born designer Charles James, an important figure in New York fashion of the 1940s and 1950s and whose work is in the Brooklyn collection.

On September 8, 2015, it was announced that Harold Koda would be stepping down from his position as Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute. Andrew Bolton, who had joined the Costume Institute in 2002 as associate curator and was made curator in 2006, was announced as his replacement.

In May 2017, the Costume Institute will feature an exhibition entitled Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons. The exhibit will be the Costume Institute's first exhibition focusing on a living designer since Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.

List of exhibitions

•China: Through the Looking Glass is the most visited exhibition in the Center's history with 815,992 visitors (fifth most visited in the Museum's history). Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is the second most visited with 661,509 visitors (ninth most visited in the Museum's History).