Andrew Bolton (born 1966) is a British museum

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

and current head curator of the

Anna Wintour Costume Center The Anna Wintour Costume Center is a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's main building in Manhattan that houses the collection of the Costume Institute. The center is named after Anna Wintour, the longtime and current editor-in-chief of ' ...

at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Early life and education

Bolton was born in 1966 in

Blackburn, Lancashire Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north- ...

and majored in anthropology at the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

, where he graduated in 1987.

Career

Bolton began his career at London's

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. On September 8, 2015, it was announced that he would replace the retiring

Harold Koda Harold Koda (born January 3, 1950 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American fashion scholar, curator, and the former curator-in-chief of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Career While at the costume institute, Koda curat ...

as curator in chief of the

. Later that year, he was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Fashion. Bolton has created and or co-created several critically lauded exhibitions including Savage Beauty featuring clothing created by British

fashion design Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates ...

Alexander McQueen Lee Alexander McQueen CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier. He founded his own Alexander McQueen label in 1992, and was chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001. His achievements in fashio ...

, as well as China: Through the Looking Glass (both with Koda). Bolton exhibitions are known for their, "scholarly rigor....whimsy.... (and) theatricality." Japanese fashion designer

Rei Kawakubo (b. 1942) is a Japanese fashion designer based in Tokyo and Paris. She is the founder of Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market. In recognition of the notable design contributions of Kawakubo, an exhibition of her designs entitled '' Rei ...

was the subject of the 2017 exhibit. In an interview with ''Vogue'' in April 2017, Bolton stated: “I really think her influence is so huge, but sometimes it’s subtle. It’s not about copying her; it’s the purity of her vision.”Lynn Yaeger. "On the Eve of the

Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons (also known as CDG) is a Japanese fashion label based in Paris that was created and led by Rei Kawakubo. Its French flagship store is located in Paris. This label owns a world-wide store chain featuring various lines of pro ...

Retrospective, the Notoriously Reclusive Rei Kawakubo Speaks Out", APRIL 13, 2017, ''Vogue'' Magazine. Bolton also stated that the exhibition would be an austere, all-white maze hosting approximately 150 Comme ensembles. Both the exhibit and accompanying book by Bolton are based upon the recurrent fashion dichotomies concentrating on eight thematic oppositions listed as: (1) fashion/antifashion; (2) design/not design; (3) model/multiple; (4) then/now; (5) high/low; (6) self/other; (7) object/subject; and (8) clothes/not clothes. Bolton's show, ''Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination'', opened on 10 May 2018. Bolton described the exhibition as an examination of "the role dress plays within the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and the role the Roman Catholic Church plays within the fashionable imagination." The exhibition included objects from the Vatican Collection alongside designs by

Gianni Versace Giovanni Maria "Gianni" Versace (; 2 December 1946 – 15 July 1997) was an Italian fashion designer, socialite and businessman. He was the founder of Versace, an international luxury-fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-u ...

, John Galliano for Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and other designers. Bolton is featured alongside

Anna Wintour Dame Anna Wintour (; born 3 November 1949) is a British journalist based in New York City who has served as editor-in-Chief of ''Vogue'' since 1988 and Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020; she is also the artistic directo ...

Andrew Rossi Andrew Rossi is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, known for directing and writing ''The Andy Warhol Diaries'' (2022). Career Rossi is the founder oAbstract Productions a company that produces film and television. He was nominated for three Emmy Aw ...

's 2016 documentary film ''

The First Monday in May ''The First Monday in May'' is a 2016 documentary film directed by Andrew Rossi. The film follows the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's most attended fashion exhibit in history: the 2015 art exhibition '' China: Through the Looking Glas ...

'', which documents the staging of the Metropolitan Museum's annual

Costume Institute Gala The Met Gala, or Met Ball, formally called the Costume Institute Gala or the Costume Institute Benefit, is an annual fundraising gala held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City. It is popularly r ...

Costume Institute Exhibitions

* 2006: '' AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion'' (May 3 – September 6, 2006) * 2007: ''

Poiret Poiret is a French language surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Jean Poiret, French author * Jean Louis Georges Poiret, former Lieutenant-Governor of Guinea *Jean Louis Marie Poiret, French clergyman, botanist, and explorer * Jeanne ...

: King of Fashion'' (May 9 – August 5, 2007) * 2008: '' Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy'' (May 7 – September 1, 2008) * 2009: '' The Model As Muse: Embodying Fashion'' (May 6 – August 9, 2009) * 2010: '' American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity'' (May 5 – August 10, 2010) * 2011: '' Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty'' (May 4 – August 7, 2011) * 2012: '' Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations'' (May 10 – August 19, 2012) * 2013: '' Punk: Chaos to Couture'' (May 9 – August 14, 2013) * 2014: ''

Charles James Charles James may refer to: * Charles James (British Army officer) (1757/8–1821), English army officer and writer * Charles James (attorney) (born 1954), former U.S. assistant attorney general * Charles James (American football) (born 1990), Amer ...

: Beyond Fashion'' (May 8 – August 10, 2014) * 2014–2015: '' Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire'' (October 21, 2014 – February 1, 2015) * 2015: '' China: Through the Looking Glass''• (May 7 – September 7, 2015) * 2015–2016: '' Jacqueline de Ribes: The Art of Style'' (November 19, 2015 – February 21, 2016) * 2016: '' Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology'' (May 5 – September 5, 2016) * 2016–2017: ''Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion'' (November 18, 2016 – February 5, 2017) * 2017: ''

: Art of the In-Between'' (May 4 – September 4, 2017) * 2018: ''Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination'' (May 10 – October 8, 2018) * 2019: '' Camp: Notes on Fashion'' (May 8 – September 9, 2019) * 2020: ''About Time: Fashion and Duration'' * 2021–2022 ''In America: A Lexicon of Fashion'' (Part one of a two part exhibition) * 2022 ''In America: An Anthology of Fashion'' (Part two of a two part exhibition)

Personal life

Since 2011, Bolton has lived in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

with fashion designer

Thom Browne Thom Browne (born September 27, 1965) is an American fashion designer. He is the founder and head of design for Thom Browne, a luxury fashion brand based in New York City. Browne debuted his womenswear collection in 2014. Early life and education ...

, his partner.

Literary works

The following is an incomplete list of his literary works: * Bolton, Andrew (2002). ''The Supermodern Wardrobe''. New York: V&A. * Bolton, Andrew (November 2, 2010). Sui, Anna; White, Jack; Meisel, Steven, eds. ''Anna Sui''. New York: Chronicle Books. . * Bolton, Andrew (2011). McQueen, Alexander, eds. ''Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. . * Bolton, Andrew (and Richard Hell, Jon Savage, John Lydon) (2013), eds. ''Punk: Chaos to Couture''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. *Bolton, Andrew (2016). ''Manux X Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. *Bolton, Andrew (2017). ''Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. *Bolton, Andrew (2018). ''Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. *Bolton, Andrew (2019). ''In Pursuit of Fashion: The Sandy Schreier Collection.'' New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bolton, Andrew Living people Alumni of the University of East Anglia English curators People associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1966 births