Can the Costume Institute Survive Without the Met Gala?

For years, as the Met Gala has grown ever bigger, blanketing social media with pictures of guests in their finery, smashing cultural fund-raising records, teetering tantalizingly on the line between fabulous and ridiculous, the questions and controversies surrounding New York’s “party of the year” have likewise proliferated.

Could the shindig, nominally a benefit for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, get any more high-profile? When most of the country was struggling, should any institution be charging $100,000 a ticket for a party? And perhaps most importantly: What would happen when Anna Wintour, the evening’s mastermind and the woman who transformed it from a typical charity ball into an attention-guzzling juggernaut, retired?

Would the brands and people willing to pony up these exorbitant sums to be in one another’s orbits instead pocket the money? And if so, what would that mean for the future of the Costume Institute, a department that has been almost fully dependent on the gala as a source of its annual funds since the party began in 1948?

Could it even survive without the extravaganza?

It turns out the museum itself has been quietly working on an answer.

“Since 2016, we have been putting some money that we raised for the gala aside into a quasi endowment,” Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, said this month.

And by 2030 — possibly as soon as 2028 — the Costume Institute will have saved enough of a nest egg to potentially support its own basic operations for the foreseeable future, no matter what happens in the greater museum economy or with the gala itself.

Along with this year’s inauguration of the new Condé M. Nast Galleries in the Great Hall, which will house the Costume Institute’s blockbuster shows, the endowment fund represents a dramatic transformation in the position of the Costume Institute, not to mention its relationship to the party held in its honor.

“I, and the museum, always wanted the department to be not as reliant on the gala every year,” Bolton said. “The Met Gala is extraordinary, but sometimes it dwarfs everything.” Besides, the department has been forced to cancel galas twice, in 2002, after Sept. 11, and in 2020, during the early months of the pandemic.

“It was a real wake-up call,” Bolton said of the Covid cancellation. “What if there was another global disaster, and people were like, ‘I can’t come to a party?’” Ms. Wintour, he said, “takes immense pride in every year going higher and higher. But there will be a point where that’s not sustainable.”

A more permanent and reliable solution was necessary to ensure that “we would be safe in terms of the upkeep and the care of our collection and have enough money to take care of ourselves indefinitely,” Bolton said.

According to Darren Walker, the president of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., “it’s always great news if a department can be fully funded. But aside from some private museums, I don’t know of any that actually are.” Enter the endowment fund.

Though Bolton and a museum spokeswoman said it was museum policy not to discuss specific department finances, and though the Met does not break out such numbers in its annual report, they did acknowledge the Costume Institute fund had been formally created in 2016 and was, like most of the museum’s endowments, run by the Met’s investment and development teams. Currently, the department’s operating costs include salaries for curators, researchers and conservators; storage and conservation of more than 33,000 objects; exhibition costs for the smaller fall shows and publications; and support of the Costume Institute’s Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library. (Bolton also estimated that about 10 percent of the Met Gala money went to the museum itself.)

Still, some back-of-the-envelope math is possible. Given that the operating budget of the Costume Institute is approximately $5 million a year, it would most likely require an endowment of between $100 and $130 million. (According to the American Alliance of Museums, 5 percent is the average draw of an endowment fund.) The gala has raised $166.5 million over the past 10 years, so subtracting the operating costs and the amount that goes directly to the Met would suggest there is approximately $106 million in the fund currently (a bit less if there were unusual expenses one year). If the party continues on the financial trajectory it has set for another two to four years, that would easily ensure enough capitol in the fund to allow the department to essentially live off the interest going forward.

“It is important for the Costume Institute, as it is for every department at the Met, that we do not spend all of the money raised annually,” said Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Met. The goal, he said, is “saving and investing funds so that the museum can be prepared for future challenges as well as cost increases.”

The Met’s overall operating costs were $427.6 million in the 2025 fiscal year, the last reported period, and that includes 17 different curatorial departments with widely varying budgets. Many departments also have their own directed endowments, including gifts earmarked for acquisitions or curatorial positions. The Annenberg Foundation grant, for example, awarded in 2001, gave the museum $10 million to create a fund for the acquisition of European paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and decorative arts.

What made the Costume Institute an anomaly in the museum ecosystem was that it raised most of its money via a party — one that had increasingly overshadowed almost every other activity of the museum itself, and that, like Wintour’s daytime employer, Condé Nast, seemed increasingly reliant on her presence and power . And though Wintour has been quick to say she is not going anywhere, she is 76 and last year relinquished day-to-day control of American Vogue to focus on her role as Condé’s chief content officer.

“Anna Wintour is not replaceable,” said William Norwich, the editor for fashion and interior design at Phaidon Press and a former editor at Vogue. (In recognition of her efforts, the downstairs Costume Institute galleries were christened the Anna Wintour Costume Center in 2014.)

Also, because the gala traditionally inaugurates a blockbuster exhibition, it by definition requires that the Costume Institute put on a major show every year, rather than adhere to the more traditional schedule of smaller shows with one mega-show every other year or every three years. That creates what Bolton described as “enormous pressure” for the department.

And the party has increasingly become a lightning rod for uncomfortable discussions about social and financial inequality. Since 2021, there have been protests around the event over police brutality, climate change and the war in Gaza. This year, posters have gone up calling for a boycott because of the involvement of Jeff Bezos, the evening’s honorary chair and main sponsor, pointing to allegations of worker exploitation, among other issues. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, has publicly announced he is not going to attend.

Allowing the gala’s profile and profit goals (the party raised $31 million in 2025) to be downsized would take some of the pressure and attention off the museum and the brands that have supported it. Many of them have begun privately bemoaning the expense of the party, which involves not just buying tickets but also paying for celebrity guests to fly in with their entourages, stay in five-star hotels, wear custom looks and have their hair and makeup done. (This year’s fashion sponsor, Saint Laurent, is underwriting only the exhibition catalog.) Especially as the luxury industry enters a period of slower growth.

Still, Norwich said he doubted it would ever go entirely away. “There is an ongoing human need and fascination for such parties,” Norwich said. “Celebrity and fashion and the sparklers will always need to be seen in order to be believed and in order to be distinguished from the crowds.”

In any case, even once the endowment is complete, more fund-raising will always be required. Operating costs continue to rise, there are special one-off investments required to maintain and expand a department, and the major exhibitions themselves require their own sponsors. But the amounts involved will not be as onerous, or as imperative. Indeed, it seems the very reason for the price inflation may have been to anticipate a time when it will no longer be necessary.

In a texted statement, Wintour simply said, “As a Met trustee, I have always felt strongly that the Costume Institute must stand on a solid footing.”

Now it is almost there. Which means, when it comes to the party, “it’ll be interesting to see how it’s going to evolve,” Bolton said.