 | | |  |  | | Upcoming |  | | Lillian Bassman: Bazaar and Beyond | | JUST OPENED | Through July 26, 2026
The Met Fifth Avenue | Can fashion photography be dangerous? Lillian Bassman was told as much when, in 1950, she started making photographs so abstract that you could barely see the clothes. Depicting midcentury style for the pages of magazines, she distilled gowns and girdles to their essential silhouettes; in her photographs, chance gestures and elegant lines convey the sensations of garments, as their details dissolve into atmospheric blur. What Bassman did not show she evoked in her expressive prints—products of darkroom distortion, achieved with tissues, brushes, and bleach.
In works from a remarkable gift to The Met, Lillian Bassman: Bazaar and Beyond highlights the influence and audacity of her magazine career. The exhibition flips between the New School in Manhattan and the "New Look" in Paris, charting Bassman's course from design apprentice to art director and accomplished photographer. Its rare vintage prints, collages, and maquettes lay out an unlikely history of modernism, refashioned for the pages of the popular press. | | Learn more → | | |  | | Flip Sides: Seeing Korean Art Anew | | OPENING SOON | March 16, 2026–May 9, 2027
The Met Fifth Avenue | Most objects are displayed to show their "best" angle meant to impress, sometimes hiding intriguing details. Flip Sides: Seeing Korean Art Anew invites close looking and offers multiple views of the inside, reverse, or hard-to-see aspects of objects.
Bringing together approximately 50 objects from The Met collection, with more than half displayed for the first time, this exhibition, with a rotation, shows treasured Korean traditions. By presenting them in ways that give us a fuller picture into each object's unique form, Flip Sides provides insight into the construction and function of works in metal, wood, ceramic, textiles, and lacquer. A Buddhist sculpture that held offerings inside, a porcelain jar of striking openwork that conceals an inner chamber, a bronze mirror with a delicately incised image, and a king's lacquer letter box with linings featuring impressive calligraphy are among the featured objects in Flip Sides. | | Learn more → | | Exhibition Highlights |  | | Costume Art | | UPCOMING | May 10, 2026–January 10, 2027
The Met Fifth Avenue | | | | |  | | Musical Bodies | | UPCOMING | June 7–September 27, 2026
The Met Fifth Avenue | | | | | | | | | | See all current exhibitions → | For more information on the exhibitions, including sponsorship credits, visit Lillian Bassman: Bazaar and Beyond, Flip Sides: Seeing Korean Art Anew, Raphael: Sublime Poetry, Gothic by Design: The Dawn of Architectural Draftsmanship, Costume Art, Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas, Musical Bodies, Wedding Attire: Three Cultures, One Celebration, Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages, and Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck.
For a full list of education program funders, please visit metmuseum.org/educationfundingsupport.
Images: Lillian Bassman (American, 1917–2012). Solarized Fashion Study (detail), ca. 1960. Gelatin silver print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Lizzie and Eric Himmel © Estate of Lillian Bassman | Korea, Kashyapa (detail), dated 1700. Wood with polychrome paint, H. 22 in. (55.9 cm); W. 9 in. (22.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1942 (42.25.8) | Raphael (Raffaello di Giovanni Santi), The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna) (detail), ca. 1509–11. Oil on canvas (transferred from wood). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.24 | Possibly by Wenzel Roriczer (German, born Bohemia, died 1419). Design for the Entrance Portal of Regensburg Cathedral (detail), ca. 1390–1410. Pen and black ink, over blind ruling with stylus, guided by compass and straightedge, on parchment, Sheet: 53 3/16 × 22 3/8 in. (135.1 × 56.9 cm). Kupferstichkabinett, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien (HZ–16871r) | Collage: "Delphos" gown, Fortuny (Italian), Adèle Henriette Elisabeth Nigrin Fortuny and Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, 1920s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Frances J. Kiernan, 2005 (2005.328); Terracotta statuette of Nike, the personification of victory, late 5th century BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1907 (07.286.23). Artwork by Julie Wolfe. | Tairona artist(s), Figure Pendant, Colombia, 900–1600 CE. Gold. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Jan Mitchell and Sons Collection, Gift of Jan Mitchell, 1991 (1991.419.31) | Thomas Zach, Violino Harpa Forma Maxima, 1874. Wood (spruce, maple, ebony), metal strings. Collections Musée de la musique / Cliché Claude Germain, 2020. Cité de la musique-Philharmonie de Paris | Woman's wedding jacket and skirt (detail), China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), early 20th century. Silk and metallic thread embroidery on silk satin, Overall: 29 1/2 x 40 in. (74.9 x 101.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Captain and Mrs. James Thach, 1946 (46.187.2a, b) | Aquamanile in the Form of Phyllis and Aristotle, Netherlandish, late 14th or early 15th century. Copper alloy, 12 ¾ x 7 x 15½ in. (32.5 x 17.9 x 39.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.1416) | Helene Schjerfbeck (Finnish, 1862–1946). Self-Portrait (detail), 1912. Oil on canvas, 17 1/8 × 16 1/2 in. (43.5 × 42 cm). Finnish National Gallery Collection, Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki (A–2016–51). Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis | | | | |
