Displaying items by tag: Alexander McQueen

As “China: Through the Looking Glass” comes to the end of its run, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will stay open until midnight, the New York Times reports.

The museum will be open three hours later than usual on September 4 and 5 to accommodate the steady stream of visitors to this summer’s Costume Institute show, which has already drawn more than 730,000 visitors and stands as one of the Met’s most popular shows of all time. (For comparison, the previous record-holder, the Met’s 2011 Alexander McQueen retrospective, was seen by 661, 509 people.)

A New York exhibition exploring Chinese influence on Western fashion has become a summer smash-hit, attracting a record 670,000 visitors in a sign of China's growing clout in America.

Spread across 16 galleries, "China: Through the Looking Glass," is the most visited show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and has been extended for three weeks.

It broke the previous record set by a 2011 show celebrating the late British designer Alexander McQueen, which went on display shortly after his tragic death, the museum said.

More than 480,000 people visited Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the V&A, making it the most visited paid-for exhibition at the Museum ever. The exhibition was the only major UK retrospective of the work of the visionary fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen, widely celebrated as one of the most innovative designers of his generation. 

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty was originally presented at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2010. The exhibition has been open at the V&A since March 14, operating for more than 1,000 hours for public opening and private events.

Still haven't found the time to see Alexander McQueen's “Savage Beauty" exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum? Fear not: the popular London museum has announced that it will remain open all night during the exhibition's two final weekends.

The museum has also released a further 12,000 tickets, as all the pre-bookable tickets have sold out.

Part of Alexander McQueen’s genius and enduring influence on fashion was his constant pushing of boundaries, both through construction of clothes, and the usage of unconventional materials in making them. His fascination with birds, which began in his boyhood, extended into his professional oeuvre, manifested in ethereal and fantastical couture collections that subverted ideas of weight, structure, and conventional beauty. Yet his mastery at tailoring was equally evident in even the most unadorned of garments, with jackets cut severely to emphasize various parts of the body, and extremely low-cut trousers aptly named “bumsters.”

The V&A has experienced record breaking advance ticket sales for the upcoming "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" exhibition. 30,000 advance tickets have been sold and pre-bookable tickets for the first five weekends of the exhibition are completely sold out. This breaks the museum's records for most ever advance sales with the figure likely to rise with another 2 months to go before the exhibition opens.

The exhibition has been extended by 2 weeks and will now finish on August 2, 2015, and early morning and late evening slots have also been added to help satisfy demand.

Tate Britain is presenting a photography exhibition the result of which is an unique collaboration between the artist Nick Waplington and the acclaimed fashion designer Alexander McQueen. This well timed exhibition will reveal McQueen’s working practice through a selection of over 130 large and small scale photographs, including images never seen before. The exhibition is timed to coincide with the Victoria and Albert Museum’s "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" fashion exhibition.

Waplington photographed McQueen’s idiosyncratic creative journey as he prepared and presented his final Autumn/Winter collection, The Horn of Plenty, in 2009.

The V&A has announced details for the only major retrospective in Europe of the work of the visionary fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen. One of the most innovative designers of his generation, McQueen was celebrated for his extraordinary creative talent. He combined a profound grasp of tailoring and eclectic range of influences with a relentless pursuit to challenge the boundaries of art and fashion, blending the latest technology with traditional craftsmanship.

Originated by the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, "Savage Beauty" will be edited and expanded for the V&A’s large exhibition galleries. It will feature 30 additional garments, including some rare early pieces, lent by private individuals and collectors such as Katy England and Annabelle Neilson as well as pieces from the Isabella Blow Collection and the House of Givenchy.

Martin Roth, the newly arrived director of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), wants to bring an Alexander McQueen exhibition to London. “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, above, closed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on 7 August, having attracted an astonishing 662,000 visitors. Its curator, Andrew Bolton, worked at the London museum in the 1990s.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that the exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, which closed last night at midnight, attracted 661,509 visitors during its run from May 4 to August 7, placing it among the Museum's top 10 most visited exhibitions. Joining other blockbusters on the list such as Treasures of Tutankhamun (1978), Mona Lisa (1963), and Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), Savage Beauty ranks as the eighth most popular exhibition ever held at the Met in its 141-year history, and is the most visited of the special exhibitions organized by The Costume Institute since it became part of the Museum in 1946.

"We are enormously gratified that visitors turned out in record numbers to view this powerful exhibition of McQueen's work," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The show was an elegant tribute to the designer's artistry, and we are proud to have shared it with such a broad audience, eager to experience the breadth of his genius."

To accommodate the public's keen interest, the Museum extended the exhibition by one week, offered a special viewing hour for Members daily at 8:30 a.m., added late hours through midnight on the last weekend, and implemented $50 ticketed Mondays with McQueen so the public could see the exhibition when the Museum was normally closed. The eight Mondays when the exhibition was open attracted more than 17,000 visitors. During the run of the retrospective, more than 23,000 new Members joined at the Museum—more than double last year's comparable numbers.

The exhibition catalogue has sold well over 100,000 copies to date through the Met's book stores and website, as well as through other outlets, with distribution by Yale University Press. Popular McQueen merchandise in the Met Shops, including armadillo shoe ornaments, crystal skull paperweights, and tartan purses, sold out several times and were repeatedly reordered.

The exhibition could not be extended further because the galleries need to be turned over for the preparation of the exhibition "Wonder of the Age": Master Painters of India, 1100-1900, which will open on September 28.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is made possible by Alexander McQueen™.
Additional support is provided in partnership with American Express and Condé Nast.