Andrew Bolton | |
---|---|
Born | 1966 (age 57–58) Blackburn, Lancashire, England |
Occupation(s) | Curator in chief, Anna Wintour Costume Center |
Known for | Savage Beauty China: Through the Looking Glass |
Partner | Thom Browne |
Andrew John Bolton OBE (born 1966 [1] ) is a British museum curator and current head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the host venue for the annual Met Gala.
Bolton was born in 1966 in Blackburn, Lancashire and majored in anthropology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he graduated with an undergraduate degree in 1987, and subsequently completed a master's degree. [1]
Bolton began his career at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. [2] [3]
On September 8, 2015, it was announced that he would replace the retiring Harold Koda as curator in chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Center in New York City. [4] Later that year, he was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Fashion. [2] [5] Bolton has created and or co-created several critically lauded exhibitions including Savage Beauty featuring clothing created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, as well as China: Through the Looking Glass (both with Koda). [2] Bolton exhibitions are known for their, "scholarly rigor....whimsy.... (and) theatricality." [2]
Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo was the subject of the 2017 exhibit. [6] In an interview with Vogue in April 2017, Bolton stated: “I really think her influence is so huge, but sometimes it’s subtle. It’s not about copying her; it’s the purity of her vision.” [7] Bolton also stated that the exhibition would be an austere, all-white maze hosting approximately 150 Comme ensembles. Both the exhibit and accompanying book by Bolton are based upon the recurrent fashion dichotomies concentrating on eight thematic oppositions listed as: (1) fashion/antifashion; (2) design/not design; (3) model/multiple; (4) then/now; (5) high/low; (6) self/other; (7) object/subject; and (8) clothes/not clothes.
Bolton's show, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, opened on 10 May 2018. Bolton described the exhibition as an examination of "the role dress plays within the Roman Catholic Church and the role the Roman Catholic Church plays within the fashionable imagination." [8] The exhibition included objects from the Vatican Collection alongside designs by Gianni Versace, John Galliano for Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and other designers. [9]
Bolton is featured alongside Anna Wintour in Andrew Rossi's 2016 documentary film The First Monday in May , which documents the staging of the Metropolitan Museum's annual Costume Institute Gala. [10]
Bolton was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to art and fashion. [11]
Since 2011, Bolton has lived in Manhattan with fashion designer Thom Browne, his partner. [12] [13]
The following is an incomplete list of his literary works:
Rei Kawakubo is a Japanese fashion designer based in Tokyo and Paris. She is the founder of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. In recognition of the notable design contributions of Kawakubo, an exhibition of her designs entitled Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, Art of the In-Between opened on 5 May 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, modeled by Rihanna.
Junya Watanabe is a Japanese fashion designer, a protégé of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo. He continues to work for Comme des Garcons: His atelier is located on the second floor of its Tokyo headquarters, and he produces four shows a year in Paris.
Dover Street Market is a multi-brand retailer originally located on Dover Street, in Mayfair, London. It has stores in New York City, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, Beijing and Los Angeles.
Rodarte is an American brand of clothing and accessories founded and headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA, by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy.
Richard Martin was an American scholar, lecturer, critic and curator, and a leading art and fashion historian. At the time of his death he was curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, creating many critically acclaimed exhibitions and contributing widely towards publications on the subject. After his death, an award in his name was set up to recognise creative, high quality and innovative costume exhibitions.
A fashion museum is dedicated to or features a significant collection of accessories or clothing. While there may be some overlap with Textile museums, fashion museums focus on what trends in clothing and accessories reveal about the larger cultural, social, and economic values of different historical periods. Although fashion is a broad term that applies to more than just clothing items, these provide tangible examples of trends changing over the years which explains why the term fashion museum is most commonly referring to those featuring clothes.
Comme des Garçons, also CDG for short, is a Japanese fashion label based in Paris, founded by Rei Kawakubo. Its French flagship store is located in Paris, while its other physical retail stores are in London, Berlin, Melbourne, Seoul, Hong Kong, New York City and in the Aoyama district of Tokyo. Other than fashion, the label has expanded to include jewelry and perfume.
The Met Gala, formally called the Costume Institute Benefit, is the annual haute couture fundraising festival held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in Manhattan. The Met Gala is popularly regarded as the world's most prestigious and glamorous fashion event. Fashion stars and models are able to express themselves by their fit according to the theme and social gathering and is known as "fashion's biggest night"; an invitation is highly sought after. Personalities who are perceived to be culturally relevant to contemporary society amongst various professional spheres, including fashion, film, television, music, theater, business, sports, social media, and politics, are invited to attend the Met Gala, organized by the fashion magazine Vogue. The entry price for one ticket has risen to US$75,000 in 2024, an increase from $50,000 in 2023, to attend the annual gala in the world's principal financial center and fashion capital, New York City.
Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty was an art exhibition held in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring clothing created by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, as well as accessories created for his runway shows. The exhibit was extremely popular in New York City and resulted in what was then record attendance for the museum. The curators were Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda.
PUNK: Chaos to Couture is a 2013 non-fiction book by Andrew Bolton, with an introduction by Andrew Bolton, an introduction by Jon Savage, and prefaces by Richard Hell and John Lydon, the "catalog of the exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 9 - August 14, 2013'.
The Anna Wintour Costume Center is a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art main building in Manhattan that houses the collection of the Costume Institute, a curatorial department of the museum focused on fashion and costume design. The center is named after Anna Wintour, the longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue, Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast, and chair of the museum's annual Met Gala since 1995. It was endowed by Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch. As of August 2017, the chief curator is Andrew Bolton.
China: Through the Looking Glass was a fashion and art exhibition held from May 7 through August 16, 2015, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art focusing on the impact of Chinese design on Western fashion over the centuries. It was curated by Andrew Bolton with support from Harold Koda). Nathan Crowley was responsible for production design.
The First Monday in May is a 2016 documentary film directed by Andrew Rossi. The film follows the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's most attended fashion exhibit in history: the 2015 art exhibition China: Through the Looking Glass by curator Andrew Bolton at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harold Koda is an American fashion scholar, curator, and the former curator-in-chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons Art of the In-Between was an art exhibition about the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo and her designs for her fashion house, Comme des Garçons. The exhibition ran from May 4 to September 4, 2017, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was curated by Andrew Bolton, who worked closely with Kawakubo to select works for the exhibition. On display were 140 women's costumes spanning the entirety of her career until 2017. This exhibit represents Kawakubo in an immersive world of Gesamtkunstwerk, "total work of art".
Camp: Notes on Fashion was the 2019 high fashion art exhibition of the Anna Wintour Costume Center, a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that houses the collection of the Costume Institute.
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination was the 2018 high fashion art exhibition of the Anna Wintour Costume Center, a wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) which houses the collection of the Costume Institute.
In America: A Lexicon of Fashion was a 2021–2022 high fashion art exhibition of the Anna Wintour Costume Center, a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA), which houses the collection of the Costume Institute. Approximately 100 men’s and women’s ensembles by a diverse range of designers from the 1940s to the present are featured. Along with ensembles, various dresses, sweaters, jackets, jumpsuits, bodysuits, coats, smocks, capes, quilts, and a flag were showcased as part of the exhibit. Enclosed in scrimmed cases that represent three-dimensional "patches" of a quilt, they are organized into 12 sections that explore defining emotional qualities: Nostalgia, Belonging, Delight, Joy, Wonder, Affinity, Confidence, Strength, Desire, Assurance, Comfort, and Consciousness.
Deconstruction is a fashion phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s. It involves the use of costume forms that are based on identifying the structure of clothing - they are used as an external element of the costume. This phenomenon is associated with designers Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, Karl Lagerfeld, Ann Demeulemeester and Dries van Noten. Deconstructivism in fashion is considered as part of a philosophical system formed under the influence of the works of Jacques Derrida.
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion is the 2024 high fashion art exhibition of the Anna Wintour Costume Center, a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) which houses the collection of the Costume Institute. The exhibition was announced on November 8, 2023. The exhibition is held at the museum from May 10 to September 2, 2024. It featured approximately 250 items from the permanent collection of the Costume Institute that were displayed using AI and CGI with themes of sea, land, and sky as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion and a vehicle to examine the cyclical themes of rebirth and renewal.
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