Lady Gaga and Harry Styles will serve as co-chairs for next year’s Met Gala, The New York Times reports. They will be joined as co-chairs by Serena Williams, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, and as always, Anna Wintour. The annual launch party for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s spring exhibition will christen the show’s newly announced title and theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” a nod to Susan Sontag’s landmark 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp.'”
Costume Institute curator in charge Andrew Bolton spoke to the Times about camp’s enduring relevance. “We are going through an extreme camp moment, and it felt very relevant to the cultural conversation to look at what is often dismissed as empty frivolity but can be actually a very sophisticated and powerful political tool, especially for marginalized cultures,” Bolton said. “Whether it’s pop camp, queer camp, high camp or political camp—Trump is a very camp figure—I think it’s very timely.”
Bolton said the exhibition will trace camp’s history back to the Palace of Versailles, which Sontag described as an epochal example of mankind rendering nature artificial. The show will feature clothing, sculpture, paintings and drawings tracking camp’s development up to our modern day of anthropocene, fake news, PC Music, and luxury running shoes. The Gala takes place on May 6.
