Met Gala 2020 theme is 'About Time: Fashion and Duration'

Nov. 7 (UPI) -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art is sharing new details about its 2020 Costume Institute Benefit.

The New York museum announced in a press release Thursday that the event, also known as the Met Gala, will take place May 4 and center on the theme "About Time: Fashion and Duration."

Nicolas Ghesquière, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Emma Stone, Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour will serve as co-chairs. The event will mark Miranda and Streep's first Met Gala.

The gala precedes the "About Time: Fashion and Duration" exhibit at the Costume Institute, which will run from May 7 through Sept. 7. The exhibit traces fashion from 1870 to the present and will feature approximately 160 examples of women's fashion.

"About Time" explores concepts of time and how clothes create associations that combine the past, present and future. The exhibit will present a linear chronology of mainly black ensembles interrupted with counter-chronologies of white clothing that relate in some way.

The exhibit will use the writings of Virginia Woolf to further examine the concept of time. Michael Cunningham, whose novel The Hours was inspired by Woolf's book Mrs. Dalloway, will write a new short story for the exhibit that reflects on the concept of duration.

"This exhibition will consider the ephemeral nature of fashion, employing flashbacks and fast-forwards to reveal how it can be both linear and cyclical," Met director Max Hollein said. "As such, the show will present a nuanced continuum of fashion over the Museum's 150-year history."

Kim Kardashian, Katie Holmes and Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas were among the stars to attend the 2019 Met Gala in May. The 2019 event had the theme "Camp: Notes on Fashion."