"Heavenly Bodies" has become the most visited exhibit in The Met's history

By

Gabriella Lacombe

Published
Oct 12, 2018

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that its exhibition 'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination' has become the museum's most visited exhibition, attracting 1,659,647 visitors to The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters during its run from May 10 through October 8.

Over 1.43 million people saw 'Heavenly Bodies' at The Met Fifth Avenue, and 228,737 at The Met Cloisters and it now exceeds the Met's previous number one exhibition, Treasures of Tutankhamun, which ran in 1978 and saw 1,360,957 visitors.

Covering a total of 60,000 square feet across 25 galleries, the show of Catholic opulence is the largest exhibition that either The Costume Institute or The Met has housed.

'Heavenly Bodies' was curated by Andrew Bolton in collaboration with The Met's Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. The exhibition was divided between The Met Fifth Avenue's medieval galleries, Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art, The Robert Lehman Wing, the Anna Wintour Costume Center and The Met Cloisters in northern Manhattan.

​Between The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Cloisters, and The Met Breuerre, the museum received more than 7.35 million visitors in the fiscal year ending on June 30. 

This marks the highest fiscal year attendance in the museum's recorded history, which the museum also attributed to the success of 'Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer,' the 10th most attended show in the Met's history. But it's clear that the fashion connection is increasingly important to the institution both as a driver of visitor traffic and a way of generating massive publicity for its events.