Podcast Summary: “Sleeping Beauties” at the Met

Podcast: All Of It with Alison Stewart, WNYC
Air Date: September 2, 2024
Guest: Andrew Bolton, Curator in Charge, Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overview

This episode spotlights “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” a unique and multi-sensory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Host Alison Stewart speaks with Andrew Bolton, the show’s curator, about how the exhibit blends historical fashion with science, technology, and innovative sensory experiences to breathe new life into garments that are too fragile to be worn or even displayed upright. Together, they explore how the exhibition deepens our appreciation for the delicate interplay between creativity, materiality, and the passage of time in fashion.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Meaning Behind "Sleeping Beauties"

• Inherent Vice in Garments
  • The exhibit opened with a gown from Charles Frederick Worth (c.1887), owned by Carrie Astor, that cannot be displayed upright due to its fragile state—its “inherent vice.”
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [02:14]:
    “Inherent vice, it's a quality that's intrinsic to an artwork that is the very cause of its ruin. So it's kind of a form of built-in destruction.”
  • This fragility reflects fashion’s ephemerality and the ongoing tension between preservation and presentation.

Using Technology to “Reawaken” Fashion

• Holograms and Digital Resurrection

  • For fragile pieces, technology (like Pepper’s Ghost holograms) helps museum-goers visualize garments in motion, as they would have been worn.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [03:28]:
    “It was a ball gown, so it was important that we showed the context in which it was worn... showing how the garment moved in time and space.”
  • Bringing garments “back to life” required digitization and careful recreation of fabric properties, textures, and movement.

• Artificial Intelligence and Interactivity

  • A standout feature: a 1930s bridal gown that "speaks" to visitors via an AI (ChatGPT) portal, allowing them to interactively ask questions about its history, designer, or owner.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [06:46]:
    “We wanted... to engage an object in an actual conversation with the viewer.”
  • The intention is to counteract the passivity of museum objects, making fashion artifacts more dynamic and personal.

Thematic Choices and Sensory Design

• Nature as Overarching Metaphor

  • The exhibit draws constant analogies between the life cycles of nature and those of fashion—highlighting fragility, obsolescence, and rebirth.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [04:59]:
    “Nature became this overarching metaphor… the idea that fragility and the ephemerality fashion, it’s obsolescence, but also the idea of rebirth and renewal.”

• Exhibition Layout and Architectural “Molecules”

  • The winding, single-file design mimics a molecule’s form, with circular “rooms” serving as thematic capsules (poppies, beetles, shells).
  • Theme exploration is multisensory: an intentional response to the museum context, where touch, smell, and sound are usually denied.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [08:58]:
    “We wanted to create... a sort of architectural representation of a molecule... so the bell jars in a way contained your senses…”

• Tactile and Auditory Experiences

  • Touch: Visitors can interact with textured wallpaper mimicking embroidery or 3D-printed models of dresses.
    • Quote, Andrew Bolton [10:17]: “Touch, the tactility of fashion, is really one of the most compromised senses... even though you can’t actually touch a dress, the idea is to sort of feel it with your hands, but also feel it with your emotion and feel it with your mind as well.”
  • Sound: The exhibit features unique auditory elements, such as the “scroop” (the sound of silk) and insect noises embedded in projections.
    • Quote, Andrew Bolton [12:15]: “Scroop, it’s a combination of the word scrape and whoop, and it’s the specific sound that silk makes.”
  • Smell: Collaborating with smell artist Cecil Tolus, authentic garment scents are captured and reproduced, evoking a rich history of use, place, and wearer.
    • Quote, Andrew Bolton [13:32]: “You’re actually smelling the olfactory history of a dress or an accessory... the perfume, the environment, what she ate, what she drank...”

Conservation and Visitor Experience

• Balancing Interactivity and Preservation
  • While the show encourages sensory immersion, visitors are reminded (sometimes by a “gentle, yet firm voice”) not to get too close—preservation still comes first.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [14:45]: “Even though some of our senses are diminished, we do expand the lifespan of the garment by allowing people not to touch them…”

Curation and Chronology

• Non-linear, Juxtaposed Display
  • The curation intentionally places 18th-century pieces alongside 21st-century design, drawing out direct inspirations, contrasts, and dialogues between eras.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [15:42]: “It’s important to show how, through interpretation... the historical garment informs the contemporary, and the contemporary enlivens historical.”

Highlighted Pieces and Themes

• Historic Craftsmanship Inspiring Today

  • 17th-century English embroidery pieces (shirt jackets bursting with garden imagery) are paired with Karl Lagerfeld designs for Chanel, showing the direct link between past and present craft.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [17:03]: “When you look at [the waistcoat], you’re actually seeing pea pods opening, strawberries, birds snatching at dragonflies... we try to capture the sort of dynamism…”

• Color Symbolism and Science

  • A wall of vibrant yellow gowns raises questions about the color’s history (derived from ‘weld’ plant dyes) and its shifting associations—happy or melancholy, depending on shade.

• Fashion as Living Object: Loewe’s Grass Seed Jacket

  • Time-lapse display shows a jacket’s seed-embedded fabric sprouting, flourishing, then dying during the exhibit—symbolizing fashion’s cycles of renewal and decay.
  • Quote, Andrew Bolton [19:46]: “In a way, that coat is the... emblem for the whole exhibition... it was this ultimate metaphor for fashion.”

The Met Gala Connection

• “Garden of Time” Theme
  • Bolton notes that Gala guests engaged deeply with the exhibit’s themes, interpreting them through vintage, floral, or “sleeping” motifs, with notable success.

Memorable Moments and Quotes

• On Visitor Experience [21:03]:
  • “All of our sort of dress code should be based on a short story. It’d be the book reading club.” (Andrew Bolton)
• On Emotional Impact [23:08]:
  • “It goes dark and it ends in feathers. So part of the show is about reawakening particular senses, but it’s also to engage your emotions... going from happiness and joy in the garden, perhaps, and then going to fear and anxiety... with the bird section.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction to the Exhibit & “Inherent Vice”: [00:49 – 03:13]
• Hologram Technology and Dress Recreation: [03:13 – 04:28]
• AI and Object Interaction: [06:03 – 07:29]
• Exhibition Design & Sensory Themes: [08:25 – 10:10]
• Touch and Tactility: [10:10 – 11:58]
• Sound Experience (“Scroop”): [11:58 – 13:13]
• Smell and Olfactory History: [13:13 – 14:36]
• Conservation vs. Experience: [14:36 – 15:30]
• Non-Linear Curation and Historical Juxtaposition: [15:30 – 16:41]
• Garden Room and Yellow’s Symbolism: [18:25 – 19:22]
• Consuming Fashion—Seeded Loewe Jacket: [19:22 – 20:49]
• Met Gala & “Garden of Time”: [20:49 – 21:57]
• Highlighting a Favorite Section: [22:11 – 23:08]
• Close/Exhibit Details: [23:29 – 23:45]

Conclusion

This episode offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes glimpse into how "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" both protects and revives fragile fashion, inviting visitors to reflect on cycles of creativity, decay, and the senses. By merging analog tradition with digital possibility, the Met’s Costume Institute shapes not just how we see fashion, but how we feel, hear, and even smell its stories.