He was impressed by what he described as the “real attention to Catholic sensibilities” behind the pairings.Īsked by Mr. Bolton work with James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large for America Magazine, who was appointed last year by Pope Francis as a consultor to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications.įather Martin said that one day, after embarrassingly spilling hummus on his pants earlier, he went to a Met conference room to review the storyboards the curators had pinned to the walls with thumbtacks. He asked Emily Rafferty, a former president of the Met with connections to New York’s Catholic community, for a hand. Jatta then informed the curator that the lending of the pieces was, anyway, out of her hands. (The Met eventually got more than 40.) Ms. Wintour said he needed to ask for at least twice that, prompting a skeptical laugh from Ms. Jatta asked how many items the Met intended to borrow, and Mr. Jatta arranged several tours for them, including another trip to the Sacristy, where this time Father Benedik’s assistant, Antonio, showed them around.

Bolton meet with Barbara Jatta, now the director of the Vatican museum.

Nesselrath suggested that on his next visit, Mr. “He wasn’t quite sure what the request was,” Mr. Bolton tried to explain the concept of the exhibition to the keeper of the sacristy, a quiet Slovakian priest named Pavel Benedik. Bolton to visit the Sistine Chapel Sacristy, a chamber of rooms within rooms containing a hive of numbered wooden doors and drawers bearing embossed strips and containing shawls and stoles, papal tiaras, papal rings and pectoral crosses. Bolton’s in the Met’s European paintings department put him in touch with Arnold Nesselrath, a Vatican museum curator. Dealing with one church proved to be enough. Bolton first envisioned as including many religious traditions. There’s an element of freedom to that - of being unbound from these earthly constraints - and delight.While the Vatican may be enthusiastic about “Heavenly Bodies” now, it took years for it to warm to an exhibit that Mr. Indeed, for many it is the only time some of the most exaggerated catwalk looks, the kind where designers just let their imaginations and their ateliers run wild, will ever appear in any context beyond a show. The Met Gala, by contrast, is an extension of the runway: the purest expression of fashion you will see on a real person (“real” being a relative term).

Most recently, thanks to the Weinstein scandal, they became statement-making platforms of a non-style-kind. No one would dare wear them to the Oscars, or the Emmys.Īwards shows (MTV’s Video Music Awards excepted, perhaps) have become play-it-safe zones when it comes to fashion, extensions of advertising contracts or auditions for them. It’s simple: Nowhere else would you see any of the above. In the lead-up to the gala there is often a lot of head-scratching about why this night is such a big deal why, of all the red carpet events during the year, this one gets so much attention. Katy Perry’s archangel wings atop a Versace thigh-high boots were hard to imagine fitting through any door.īy the time Rihanna, another co-host, made her entrance in a Pope-tastic bejeweled white Maison Margiela minidress with overskirt and miter, and the internet broke, there was really nothing to say but: oh my God. Nicki Minaj’s red sequined Oscar de la Renta was so long it took two people to carry. And speaking of halos: The accessories of choice were a headdress and an endless train.

Met gala 2018 heavenly bodies