3. Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York City, NY

The newly re-named Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art comprises a collection of more than thirty-five thousand costumes and accessories represents five continents and seven centuries of fashionable dress, regional costumes, and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

The Costume Institute organizes one or more special exhibitions annually; due to the sensitive nature of textiles, the collection is not on permanent public view. However, two fashion-focused tours are available year round: “Fashion in Art,” a tour led by Costume Institute docents that discusses costume history within the context of the Museum’s collections of armor, textiles, paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts; and “Costume: The Art of Dress,” a recorded Audio Guide narrated by the actress Sarah Jessica Parker that highlights historical costume throughout the Museum’s galleries.

Behind the scenes is a state-of-the-art costume conservation laboratory; an expanded study/storage facility to house the combined holdings of the Met and the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection; and The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library, one of the world’s foremost fashion libraries.

Founded in: 1937

Size of Collections: 35,000

Yearly Visitors: 6,115,881

Staff: Harold Koda, Andrew Bolton