Biography
As curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute since 2006, Andrew Bolton is recognised for having spearheaded some of the most groundbreaking and innovative fashion exhibitions in the museum’s history. Most noted for the phenomenally successful "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" retrospective in 2011, Bolton has also overseen the Rai Kawakubo exhibition in 2017, as well as the successful "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which has attracted over 1 million visitors, making it the museum's third most popular exhibit ever, and featured objects from the Vatican Collection alongside designs by Gianni Versace, John Galliano for Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. Bolton also curated the 2019 exhibit "Camp: Notes on Fashion."
A graduate of social anthropology from the University of East Anglia, Bolton spent nine years at the Victoria & Albert museum in London before decamping for New York. In 2002 he joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as an Associate Curator of the Costume Institute, and in 2005 it was announced that he would replace the retiring Harold Koda as Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute.
A celebrated curator, Bolton has been awarded the "Best Design Show" award by the International Association of Art Critics for an exhibition on couturier Paul Poiret. In 2009, Bolton was awarded with the AIGA Design Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award for "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy" catalogue. In 2017, Bolton received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal College of Art.
Bolton lives on the Upper West Side, New York with his partner, the designer Thom Browne .