New York’s MOMA has announced plans for an upcoming exhibit titled “Is Fashion Modern?,” an examination of fashion’s place a marker of human identity. The exhibit title riffs off of the museum’s Bernard Rudofsky-curated, 1944 exhibit “Are Clothes Modern?,” the last, entirely fashion-focused exhibit held by the museum.
In speaking on the connection between the exhibit, press reads, “While we have kept his use of a provocative question, we have deliberately replaced Rudofsky’s use of ‘clothes’ with ‘fashion’ to signal the complex relationship between the design of garments and contemporaneity, and to locate our own questions about what is modern in the items that have defined the decades since his show.”
Rather than highlight a designer or a theme, ‘Is Fashion Modern?” will focus in large part on the everyday by taking on the anthropological significance of enduring articles of clothing like Levi‘s 501 jeans, Converse All-Star sneakers and iconic little black dress.
According to a press description of the exhibit, “Items will consist of a selection of 111 garments and accessories that have had a strong impact on history and society in the 20th and 21st centuries, and that continue to hold currency today. Each of the 111 items will be explored along three tiers: archetype, stereotype, and prototype. In the exhibition, each item will be presented in the incarnation that made it significant in the last 100 (or so) years—the stereotype—accompanied by contextual material (documentary, scholarly, aesthetic, or personal histories of clothing) that trace back to the historical archetype.”
“Is Fashion Modern?” will open on on October 1, 2017 through January 28th.
Image above via moma.org.
