Met Museum Launches American Woman Style Exhibit

American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity
May 5, 2010–August 15, 2010
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, 2nd floor

‘American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity’, is the first Costume Institute exhibition drawn exclusively from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Met. It will explore developing perceptions of the modern American woman from 1890 to 1940, and how they have affected the way American women are seen today. Focusing on archetypes of American femininity through dress, the exhibition will reveal how the American woman initiated style revolutions that mirrored her social, political, and sexual emancipation. “Gibson Girls,” “Bohemians,” and “Screen Sirens” among others, helped lay the foundation for today’s American woman.

The NYTimes reported in Dec 2008 that the Brooklyn costume collection, out of public view for more than a decade, is considered one of the best in the world.