the met gala

Are the costumes at the Met Gala art? Is the Met Gala itself art? And if it is, is it art worth giving our attention?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art held its annual fundraising gala a week or so ago, and I did my usual best to ignore it because (spoiler alert) I hate it, with approximately the same vigor with which I hate awards shows or the playing of “God Bless America” at sporting events. But my efforts to avoid it were interrupted by a series of posts by a fashion writer named Derek Guy, who writes extensively and knowledgeably and incisively about fashion, and especially about the economic history of fashion. And so, here we are.

This post is not intended to be a rejection of what Guy had to say about the Met Gala. I admire his work, and I learn a lot from it, and his posts made me reflect on various topics I care about, and write about in these posts especially: art, and the role of art, and the meanings we derive from art as audiences and convey as artists ourselves. And why art, in all its various forms, is a human activity that achieves what no other form of human activity - particularly, direct communication - can achieve.

What I have to say may greatly sound like a rejection, because I disagree with Guy, at least as a matter of taste. But they say taste is beyond debate, and I have no desire to suggest that Guy’s opinions and his career focus are wrong, any more than I care to defend my interest in baseball. It would be fair to say, “Chris, your tastes have colored your analysis of other questions.” I’m sure they have. I think it’s more than that, though. Beyond taste, I disagree with Guy as well about the role and worth of an event like the Met Gala.

To start with, I think we need to clarify what we mean when we use the word “art.” Guy begins his series of posts by offering us a sort of definition:

Pierre Bourdieu once argued that the question of whether something is art isn’t answered by the artist's intention or even the object itself. Instead, the quality of being “art” is conferred by a community — curators, dealers, auction houses, audiences, etc.

The “collective belief,” as he called it, that something is art results from social networks and institutions that recognize and legitimize that thing’s status. It’s about symbolic production (discourse), not material production (object).

I find this definition bizarre. Pierre Bourdieu was a sociologist, and Wikipedia says his work “was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is maintained within and across generations.” I will not say that such a focus makes his attempt to define art invalid, but it does make it skewed; it’s certainly not the way an artist would look at their work, and I don’t think it’s how audiences look at artists’ work. I’m sure the sociological view, the Marxist view - I’m more familiar with Althusser than Bourdieu, and I’m not that familiar with Althusser - is that artists and their audiences are blinded by ideology to what is actually at play when audiences encounter art, or label something as “art.” But looking at life, and certainly looking at art, only through a sociological lens is no way to live.

I’ll also point out, as suggested by Althusser, that both Bourdieu’s attempt to define art and Guy’s attempts to apply it - and mine! - are shaped by the ideologies we reside in, no matter how much we imagine ourselves to be examining the world from those ideologies (1). So we’re all unreliable critics, here.

(Also also: I firmly believe that artists don’t really know what they are saying through their work. There’s no reason to think artists would be able to define art for their part, either.)

But defining art through what amounts to its commercial nature surely leaves something out. Were Emily Dickinson’s poems not “art” until they were found under her bed? (2) Did Grandma Moses’s paintings suddenly become “art” when they were discovered, or did they become more art when the prices went from $5 to thousands? Are you an artist? Is what you make art?

Bourdieu’s definition, as restated by Guy, is rather binary: something is art or it isn’t. And, it’s (obviously) sociological, which is to say cultural, which is to say that an object that is “art” in one place or time might not be art in another. The Metropolitan Museum “of Art” is full of Greek pottery that is beautiful and interesting, but that its makers and users may well have thought were just utilitarian objects. Per Bourdieu, an object is or isn’t “art,” but whether it is or isn’t is not fixed. That works in an academic sense, I suppose; IANA sociologist. However, it’s profoundly unsatisfying when considering whether the fits in the Met Gala are art, or the Met Gala (as an event) is art, or the Met’s fashion collections themselves, as objects, qualify as art.

Guy’s series of posts - which are informative and insightful, and totally worth your time; follow the link above - curiously avoid committing to Bourdieu’s definition of art. It’s presented as “this fella says”– not “I believe.” For the argument that follows - a full-throated and well-informed defense of the Met Gala, if ever I’ve read one - we need a little bit more solid ground to stand on. Guy basically starts us out with an “if.” If you’re going to do that, at some point you need to subject that assumption to scrutiny, and Guy never gets around to justifying why anyone should swallow Bourdieu’s definition.

That doesn’t make (he said, for at least the third time) what Guy has to say wrong; it just makes his argument wobbly. In fact, I would say (and will say), relying on Bourdieu the way Guy (sort of) does makes it entirely possible - maybe even easy - to reject everything he has to say by simply pulling the bottom block out of his Jenga tower.

I’m reminded of - to choose Derek Guy’s polar opposite - the way Ross Douthat in the New York Times would craft airtight arguments in favor of some conservative position or other. Airtight as long as you never questioned his assumptions, which usually boiled down to “the Catholic church says ….” (This was back in the days when Douthat actually cared about making arguments, as opposed to just punching out screeds supporting the results of the Trumpiriato while somehow also decrying Trump himself. (3))

All that to say - and lord, that was a lot - I mostly reject the definition of art Derek Guy starts from. It doesn’t work for me in my life; it’s not interesting with respect to the way I think about art; I don’t think it actually gives us a way to think about art vs. non-art, or especially the worth of art - which I take to be Guy’s main point - as we navigate through the world. In these respects, it is utterly, unhelpfully, hermetically academic.

That said (and again, that was a lot, thanks for sticking with it, and if you skipped over it who can blame you?) - all that said, let me offer a different perspective on the Met Gala from that of Derek Guy.

First, you need my definition of art. I’ve mentioned this other times.

Art is any form of communication in which the audience participates in the construction of meaning. This occurs on a spectrum; the more the audience participates, the more easily we can describe something as art. (4)

The reader of a newspaper sale-a-bration ad doesn’t have to supply any of the meaning; the meaning is whatever the listed price is. Pornography rarely - at best - has anything I would be inclined to call “meaning” (5), and I’m comfortable saying almost none of it is art. Nor a superhero movie like Man of Steel, where whatever meaning it may have arrives gift-wrapped. (6)

This is an entirely homemade definition. You don’t have to accept it! Derek Guy doesn’t have to accept it. We can argue about that another time. But I want to lay it out before offering my own take on the Met Gala. (Reminder: I hate it.)

And that begins with: I don’t really think the Met Gala has much of anything to do with art.

I don’t know whether the collections of clothing in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute are art. They are certainly craft of the highest level. A remarkable level. Some of them are beautiful, some of them are ugly as sin, and all such judgments are in the eyes of each of us.

Guy appropriately, insightfully, talks about the efforts of the many people required to manufacture the articles in the Costume Institute. His attention to the individuals who actually provide the labor that goes into clothing of any stripe, whether ballroom gowns, fast fashion, or T-shirts, is a hallmark of his work.

Few people consider the farmers, spinners, weavers, dyers, designers, pattern makers, sewers, embroiderers, finishers, and pressers that collaborate to produce something fantastical.

Guy is right about the anonymity of not merely these individuals, but of the work they do. But he elides the way the Met, too, ignores them. None of them are invited to attend the event; none of them have their names announced on the news as the designers are; the museum and its, um, benefactors neither know nor care who any of the actual workers are. The Met Gala, if anything, contributes to the culture that denies their existence.

Are these workers artists? Guy wants to validate their work as art.

Much like how knitting (a feminine-coded activity) is relegated to “crafts,” while sculptures (a masculine-coded activity) is elevated to the “arts,” it's assumed that this sort of stuff isn't “serious” and thus subject to harsher scrutiny.

I think Guy’s point is both valid and misdirected. The problem isn’t that knitting is “relegated to ‘crafts,’” the problem is that craft, or at least these particular crafts, are relegated to second-class status. He and I disagree here, but not because of the value and necessity of the work, and the skill it requires - because we start from different definitions of art. (7)

Undeniably, the articles of clothing in the Met’s Costume Institute represent tremendous skill and effort in terms of design and construction. Equally, they are historical artifacts of importance, and as mentioned, the Met is full of objects that are spectacular historical artifacts, from every age of history and every part of the world (8). Many of them are without a doubt art, in that they were intended to, and actually do, convey meaning through their form (and require the viewer to interpret that meaning). Others - Japanese bowls, Etruscan knives, colonial American tables and chairs - are, again, the highest level of craft, gorgeous and rare, but their meaning is to be a bowl, a knife, a table. It is entirely legitimate for the Metropolitan Museum to be the place that preserves these objects and displays them for us - just as it is legitimate for the Met to store and display clothing. They are fascinating and important historical objects. That doesn’t make them art, no matter what the last two words of the institution’s name may be. (9)

Well, you know, who cares whether they’re “art” or “craft” or whatever other word one might apply? In truth, not me. Except, if your defense of the Met Gala, which, again, I hate, is that the clothing worn by attendees is art, my answer is, in nearly every case, it is not. The sole meaning (10) of the clothes - the clothes themselves - worn by the attendees is: This cost a great deal of money.

It’s worse than that. Digging deeper into the reality of those craftspeople (or artists) who actually made the physical objects, the meaning of the clothes is, This cost a great deal of money, and I can wear it because I am able to exploit the labor of many individuals, nearly all of them underpaid, and all of them - all of them - anonymous. All of them non-people, as far as this event is concerned.

Guy points out that without the Met Gala, those laborers would have less work; they would be even more non-people. And it is quite possible that many of them enjoy and are fulfilled by the work, in the same way that any true craftsperson (or artist) is fulfilled by good achievement, even anonymously. In the same way that I’m fulfilled when I manage to fix a broken lamp or cook a successful meal. (Neither of which I’m claiming as art. If you’ve tasted my cooking you’ll agree.)

Still: I think there’s an odd disconnect between elevating the work of these individuals, and failing to see the way the Met Gala goes on ignoring them, assigning them to second-class status, or worse. Derek Guy wants to celebrate them, and I admire that. The Met Gala cares not a whit about doing so, as far as I can tell.

I’ll pause to note: one can have a different perspective on the meaning of these clothes, beyond my uninformed and mostly uninterested assessment. One attendee at this year’s gala, the wife of Jeff Bezos, wore a dress that was described as a sort of homage to John Singer Sargent's Madame X. That seems like a stretch to me, and if it was an homage it was badly executed. Nevertheless, I absolutely acknowledge that a historian of fashion - like Derek Guy! - could trace the designs and presentation of the clothing at the Met Gala to their sources and explain how they further or break from tradition, and what that may say to us. We may differ on what, if any, we think the clothing’s meaning is.

Ultimately, however, whether the clothing at the Met Gala qualifies as art is less significant than a second question: What is meant by the performance of wearing certain kinds of clothes at the Met Gala? For example, the meaning of wearing certain clothes to the gala might be, This did not cost a great deal of money. I suppose there are people who show up at the Met Gala wearing some equivalent of T-shirts and jeans (although as I sit here wearing a combination of T-shirt and jeans that cost me a total of about $300 MXN, or less than $20 USD, I’m reflecting that almost certainly the T-shirts and jeans worn to the Met Gala by people who want to mock the fashions of the Met Gala, or whatever, or who just don’t care, still cost what I would consider a great deal of money).

I could start to say, yes, in some cases, I guess. Sure, you could say that my straw dude wearing a T-shirt and jeans is offering a kind of performance art. You could say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, showing up a couple years ago in a dress with “TAX THE RICH” scrawled all over it in blood-red dye was a kind of performance art. That doesn’t make it good art, much less effective art. Oh contrary, I would say. To whatever extent Ocasio-Cortez was making a statement with her attendance and her dress, she was participating in the visibility and prestige of the event, adding to its purported newsworthiness, making it more of a thing than it already is, which is way more of a thing than it should be.

And those are the exceptions, in any case, ones that prove the rule. They’re gnats, AOC and the few others attempting to be jesters buzzing around the giants of the Beyonces and the Anne Hathaways and the Mrs. Jeff Bezoses (and yes, she has a name, but she doesn’t really deserve to, at least not one anyone ought to know). Ocasio-Cortez made her presence known for a moment, maybe ’til the next day, but the ultimate message was The Met Gala matters. Which might even be OK if the enduring message of the Met Gala, the one that lasts beyond the next news cycle were not Wealth matters, and if the enduring message of all of the attendees at the Met Gala, including AOC and T-shirt Straw Guy, just as much as Beyonce and Mrs. Bezos, were not I have more wealth and status than you.

I have just spent three decently long paragraphs trying to limn the meaning of at least certain people wearing certain clothes at the Met Gala, which may or may not be what they actually intended, and is certainly debatable so - sure, it is possible for one’s act of wearing certain clothing at the Met Gala to be a form of art.

I will insist however, that in nearly all cases, in so many cases that the others are negligible, it is not a form of art. Not remotely. It’s just an obscene display of wealth and status, signifying nothing more, a unidirectional message in which the viewer cannot object or interpret, but can only receive the message of how much Beyonce’s dress cost (and yes, how pretty and stunning it is) the way one receives the price of a toaster in a Wal-Mart ad. You can buy a toaster or not, but you can’t tell the cashier you’re going to pay a different price. And Mrs. Bezos will always have more money than you.

Derek Guy’s other defense of the Met Gala is that it raises a metric ton of money for the Met’s Costume Institute, and - he does not quite put it this way, but I will - that that fact excuses its others sins. (He doesn’t appear to believe they are sins, of course, and he is entitled to that opinion. It’s better informed than any of mine! It doesn’t come from someone whose near-total lack of interest in fashion biases him against the entire enterprise!)

There is something about this that reminds me of when I visited Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and was guided through a series of dioramas explaining the history of Mormonism. The guide was kind and sincere, and I don’t wish to disparage her specifically, but a great deal of her explanations were aimed at a kind of logical, quasi-scientific proof of Mormon cosmology. I came away thinking, you either have faith or you don’t, and if you have it, you need no proof whatsoever. Defending the wretched excess (again, my perspective) of the Met Gala by pointing out the money it raises is redundant if you already believe, and think I should believe, the event itself merits admiration.

Anyway. I have two thoughts about the Met Gala as a fundraiser.

First, Derek Guy notes that the costume gala has raised so much money that the costume institute will be self-sustaining. On the one hand, that’s nice. On the other hand, the idea is we’re supposed to put up with this terrible, ugly event - again, Guy doesn’t seem to think it’s terrible and ugly, and he’s entitled to that opinion - we’re supposed to put up with this event a few more years, and then enough cash will have been raked in that it won’t be needed anymore.

I am not - you may have figured this out - inclined to think that this end would justify the means, and I won’t bore you by rehashing why. I've never had a lot of patience with “Think but this, and all is mended.”

Aside from that, however, does Guy or anyone else suffer from the delusion that the Met Gala would go away if, as he implies, the Costume Institute achieves fundraising escape velocity? That is not the way fundraising works. That is not the way anything works. The socialites and their hangers-on will demand to continue to see and be seen. The Costume Institute will find some other justification for raising the money, and if not the Costume Institute, then some other part of the enterprise will see an opportunity to claim those funds for its own use. The marketing department will point out how much attention comes the Met’s way because of the event. Other funders - particularly, the governments of the State and City of New York - will pointedly ask why the museum’s management turned away from such a lucrative endeavor. Especially, the people attending the event will object to being stripped of their night in the spotlight.

So what? Let people keep giving to the Met if that’s what they want to do, you might respond.

The answer, and my second point, is that one’s fundraising ought to reflect one’s values. I said this elsewhere (sadly, paywalled) in arguing that Amazon’s program of giving pennies to nonprofits for directing customers to them was counterproductive. Here’s the argument I made there:

Especially for a small, local organization, driving people to Amazon so you can collect half a percent of what they may spend undermines the very work you’re your organization is trying to accomplish. There are corner stores everywhere that could have used the business that organizations were driving to Amazon – stores that would in turn purchase from other local businesses, employ local people, organize to improve their neighborhoods, cast light on otherwise dark sidewalks. Any small organization, whether explicitly working for social justice or not, carries forward the mission of building a community. If there is a less community-minded operation than Amazon, if there is any company more destructive, in our current day, of the fabric of communities, I can’t think of what it might be. (11)

Your fundraising needs to be consistent with your mission. If you regard the Met Gala as an unalloyed good, then absolutely there‘s no issue here. But if you’re less certain, then all the money in the world doesn’t balance the damage done by an event celebrating the excess of the world’s wealthiest, the structural reinforcement it offers the club of the ultra-rich, the skewing of the institution’s mission to support the interests of those wealthy donors who don’t like certain kinds of art or certain kinds of artists or whatever else they may communicate in the meetings they surely are able to obtain with the museum’s management. I take it as an article of faith that no institution can withstand the influence of its most important donors - an article of faith developed through years of managing an institution and working to find and retain donors while keeping some semblance of our mission and values intact, and through the same years watching other institutions succeed or fail at doing that last bit.

But more than that, the Met claims to hold as values equity and openness and accommodating all. “Diversity, inclusion, and equal access have been, and will continue to be, fundamental principles at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” their website says. It is my well-considered and strongly held opinion that the Metropolitan Museum of Art needs to be a place for the whole city of New York - indeed, the whole world, but especially its home city, with all of its diversity. Economic especially. And in the face of that, the Met Gala, the biggest event of the most important cultural institution in the city of New York, says, You must care about the rich and powerful.

That is the entire meaning of the Met Gala, and it is on its own face a disgusting statement, and more, it stands as a huge, garish, ugly rejection of all of those values the Met claims to hold.

And if the Metropolitan Museum of Art doesn’t actually hold those values, then seriously: Fuck the Met. Shut the doors, stop giving it my tax dollars, sell the paintings, repatriate the statuary, burn the place down, and stop letting it tie up valuable acreage of Central Park that could be used instead for a playground.

Apart from having no interest in fashion - at times a deep antipathy for it, and you can use that to perform any kind of psychoanalysis of me that you wish; it would probably not be wrong - aside from that, as I mentioned, I’ve managed arts organizations for the better part of thirty years. Tiny ones, ones where we cobbled together loose change to make payroll at the end of the week, where I looked over the bills and decided which ones I could pay, where I would from time to time phone up a board member to say, “Now would be a good time for us to receive your annual donation.” Where we would hold an annual fundraiser, or sometimes more than annual, and count it as a success to bring in ten or fifteen thousand dollars, net of expenses. Less, a lot of the time.

And less than a single damned gown at the Met Gala.

And in one respect, that is not the fault of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Metropolitan Opera, or any other arts organization you might name. It was not their responsibility to make sure that the actors of the Falconworks Theater Company were well fed. Nor is it the case that if Lady Gaga had not spent [insert absurd figure] on four costumes in 2019 that we would have been able to afford a better stage manager. And, as Derek Guy notes, much of that [absurd figure] went to craftspeople who otherwise would have been out of work. (12)

Thus, the gala helps sustain these craft industries and keeps the production quality high for the areas of culture you care about.

(“Craft” is his word, by the way, not just mine.)

It irks me nonetheless. It bothers me to see people throwing money around. It angers me more to see an arts institution hosting a blatant celebration of throwing money around when other people trying to make art are begging - literally begging - to be able to keep the lights on. This is, yes, my bias. It has grown out of what someone once called my keen sense of injustice. I have come to hold that keen sense dear.

I am not so naïve as to think that we could redirect the wealth of the Bezoi by canceling the Met Gala. That is not how any of this works.

Go ahead and enjoy the Met Gala if that’s your thing. But don’t defend it as a fundraiser, or as a boon to the industry, or as anything worthy of attention for being anything more than your idea of fun. And least of all - no matter how spectacular it is, no matter how well executed it is, no matter what the sociologists say - least of all, defend it as “art.”

Thanks for reading. And thanks to Derek Guy for his insights, and apologies for conscripting him as my foil.

Subscribe as a paying member to help support my writing and the costs of publishing these posts. And receive my undying gratitude.

upgrade to paid

(1) Here’s the text in question. Like most Marxists, Althusser could write thickets of prose that at times seemed intended to deter the unindoctrinated. So, good luck:

I might add: what thus seems to take place outside ideology (to be precise, in the street), in reality takes place in ideology. What really takes place in ideology seems therefore to take place outside it. That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself (unless one is really a Spinozist or a Marxist, which, in this matter, is to be exactly the same thing). Which amounts to saying that ideology has no outside (for itself), but at the same time that it is nothing but outside (for science and reality).

(2) I don’t know whether she actually put them under her bed.

(3) It’s been a long time since I’ve paid the New York Times Company to read Mr. Douthat’s opinions regularly. Maybe he’s moved on to more worthy themes.

(4) That’s almost certainly different from previous versions I've put forth, especially the phrase “the more easily.” I suppose it would be possible for an artist to create some work where the audience had to supply the entire meaning, and it seems problematic to call that art. The artist has to have something to say.

(5) I suppose I need a definition of that word, too. You’re not getting one, though.

(6) Man of Steel’s principal meaning was that it extracted $14 from your pocket while making your ears bleed.

(7) There is a huge amount we could say about gender and racial roles and they way they manifest in the Met Gala. That deserves a book. My thesis would be: Every attempt to break gender and racial roles via the Met Gala ends up reinforcing them.

I’ll add that architecture is usually considered an art, and few people consider the engineers, stonemasons, and steelworkers who collaborate to produce something fantastical. It’s not just about gender; it’s arguably much more about class (to which, of course, gender and race are enormous contributors).

(8) Many of them ought to be repatriated to the parts of the world they came from.

(9) Any number of objects - furniture and bowls and for that matter articles of clothing which upon them bear other representations or messages - a vase with two lovers on the precipice of a kiss, for example. Does that make the object itself art, or only the embellishment of the object?

I have no intention of ever considering this question.

(10) We still need a definition of “meaning” here, and I’m still not giving you one.

(11) This is my original version, prior to improvements made in collaboration with the editing staff of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, plainly, is not a “small” organization. Perhaps different rules apply to them. I maintain, however, that the general point that one’s fundraising ought to reflect one’s values still holds.

(12) Adequately funding a variety of arts organization would give those people work, too, you know.