Art & Culture

SFMOMA Ready for First Fashion Exhibit in Over 40 Years with Louise Bourgeois, Dior Encounter

Postwar creative mediums will harmonize in San Francisco next year

August 24, 2026

Christian Dior, Bar suit, Spring-Summer 1947 Haute Couture collection, a white fitted blazer with buttons paired with a high-waisted, black pleated skirt displayed on a mannequin in a minimal setting. — Christian Dior, Bar suit, Spring-Summer 1947 Haute Couture collection, Corolle line. Photo: © Laziz Hamani / Courtesy SFMOMA

Fashion and art are clear conversationalists, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be amplifying that dialogue next spring when they launch “Fashioning Form: Dior to McQueen,” the museum’s first major fashion-oriented show since 1983’s Issey Miyake retrospective. The exhibition will pair works by designers including Cristóbal Balenciaga, Thom Browne, Christian Dior, Iris van Herpen, Alexander McQueen, Daniel Roseberry for Schiaparelli, and more with sculptors, among them Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Lygia Clark, Jannis Kounellis, Tatsuo Miyajima, Henry Moore, Cornelia Parker, and Ernesto Neto.

Modern art installation at with pink stretched fabric forming geometric shapes in a gallery setting with wooden floor. — *My Little Castle… Blue (two times for infinity),* Ernesto Neto. Photo: © Ernesto Neto, courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

The mid-20th century saw a shift in design thinking that persists in art and design to this day. “Today’s most progressive designers are challenging the norms of wearability and recasting the silhouette as anything but traditional,” said “Fashioning Form” curator Ann Marguerite Tartsinis, continuing, “Trailblazing fashion designs that have emerged since the postwar era blur the boundaries between art, performance and self-expression.”

Planned juxtapositions will offer exciting commentary on how porous the lines between creative modes truly are. Chamberlain’s gigantic crushed and folded chromium-plated steel Fenellosa’s Column will be alongside striking pleated and metallic garments by Madame Grès, Adrian, and Glenn Martens for Margiela Artisanal. And the Bourgeois/Dior pairing, likely to be a highlight, will match the couturier’s instantly recognizable, New Look-declaring Bar suit from 1947 with the sculptor’s Persistent Antagonism, which presents the same black-and-white palette in an elongated painted wood form.

Abstract Louise Bourgeois sculpture from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibiti on a square base, featuring a tall, black cylindrical form topped with a white, elongated shape. — *Persistent Antagonism,* Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Ben Blackwell / Courtesy San Francisco Musem of Modern Art

“This truly unique, immersive exhibition positions innovative fashion directly in the context of postwar and contemporary art, including major works of sculpture in SFMOMA’s collection,” stated SFMOMA Director Christopher Bedford, later adding “This presentation shows how the most daring works of fashion and sculpture have made use of new technologies and techniques to reconcieve what a work of art can be.”