Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton Talks Fashion and Museums

Legions of visitors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute have seen Andrew Bolton without even knowing it. Working at the Fifth Avenue museum since 2002, the British-born curator has contentedly gone about his days behind-the-scenes. But in the past 12 years, he has put his personal touch on 12 exhibitions that have been gazed upon by thousands, including many with the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, Harold Koda. Now, as this year’s Vilcek Foundation fashion prize winner, Bolton can’t shake the spotlight. The prize — whose jury included Koda, Cecilia Dean, Jimmy Moffat of Art + Commerce and Julie Gilhart among others comes with a $100,000 award. So one wintry morning, Bolton agreed to talk shop in The Costume Institute library, just steps away from his office. With the Barneys-bequeathed Diana Vreeland mannequin looming playfully, the ultraorderly atheneum with a pencils-only policy was a fitting location to learn about his career. Fastidious as the Met is about preserving fashion and its role in history, Bolton, along with Koda and the team, are very much focused on tomorrow. “We want to be on the cusp of predicting what might be interesting to people. But I think fundamentally what we do is

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