\u201cI, and the museum, always wanted the department to be not as reliant on the gala every year,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cThe Met Gala is extraordinary, but sometimes it dwarfs everything.\u201d Besides, the department has been forced to cancel galas twice, in 2002, after Sept. 11, and in 2020, during the early months of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a real wake-up call,\u201d Bolton said of the Covid cancellation. \u201cWhat if there was another global disaster, and people were like, \u2018I can\u2019t come to a party?\u2019\u201d Ms. Wintour, he said, \u201ctakes immense pride in every year going higher and higher. But there will be a point where that\u2019s not sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
A more permanent and reliable solution was necessary to ensure that \u201cwe would be safe in terms of the upkeep and the care of our collection and have enough money to take care of ourselves indefinitely,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n
According to Darren Walker, the president of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., \u201cit\u2019s always great news if a department can be fully funded. But aside from some private museums, I don\u2019t know of any that actually are.\u201d Enter the endowment fund.<\/p>\n
Though Bolton and a museum spokeswoman said it was museum policy not to discuss specific department finances, and though the Met does not break out such numbers in its annual report, they did acknowledge the Costume Institute fund had been formally created in 2016 and was, like most of the museum\u2019s endowments, run by the Met\u2019s investment and development teams. Currently, the department\u2019s operating costs include salaries for curators, researchers and conservators; storage and conservation of more than 33,000 objects; exhibition costs for the smaller fall shows and publications; and support of the Costume Institute\u2019s Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library. (Bolton also estimated that about 10 percent of the Met Gala money went to the museum itself.)<\/p>\n
Still, some back-of-the-envelope math is possible. Given that the operating budget of the Costume Institute is approximately $5 million a year, it would most likely require an endowment of between $100 and $130 million. (According to the American Alliance of Museums<\/a>, 5 percent is the average draw of an endowment fund.) The gala has raised $166.5 million over the past 10 years, so subtracting the operating costs and the amount that goes directly to the Met would suggest there is approximately $106 million in the fund currently (a bit less if there were unusual expenses one year). If the party continues on the financial trajectory it has set for another two to four years, that would easily ensure enough capital in the fund to allow the department to essentially live off the interest going forward.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important for the Costume Institute, as it is for every department at the Met, that we do not spend all of the money raised annually,\u201d said Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Met. The goal, he said, is \u201csaving and investing funds so that the museum can be prepared for future challenges as well as cost increases.\u201d<\/p>\n The Met\u2019s overall operating costs<\/a> were $427.6 million in the 2025 fiscal year, the last reported period, and that includes 17 different curatorial departments with widely varying budgets. Many departments also have their own directed endowments, including gifts earmarked for acquisitions or curatorial positions. The Annenberg Foundation grant<\/a>, for example, awarded in 2001, gave the museum $10 million to create a fund for the acquisition of European paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and decorative arts.<\/p>\n What made the Costume Institute an anomaly in the museum ecosystem was that it raised most of its money via a party \u2014 one that had increasingly overshadowed almost every other activity of the museum itself, and that, like Wintour\u2019s daytime employer, Cond\u00e9 Nast, seemed increasingly reliant on her presence and power. And though Wintour has been quick to say she is not going anywhere, she is 76 and last year relinquished day-to-day control<\/a> of American Vogue to focus on her role as Cond\u00e9\u2019s chief content officer.<\/p>\n \u201cAnna Wintour is not replaceable,\u201d said William Norwich, the editor for fashion and interior design at Phaidon Press and a former editor at Vogue. (In recognition of her efforts, the downstairs Costume Institute galleries were christened the Anna Wintour Costume Center in 2014.)<\/p>\n Also, because the gala traditionally inaugurates a blockbuster exhibition, it by definition requires that the Costume Institute put on a major show every year, rather than adhere to the more traditional schedule of smaller shows with one mega-show every other year or every three years. That creates what Bolton described as \u201cenormous pressure\u201d for the department.<\/p>\n And the party has increasingly become a lightning rod for uncomfortable discussions about social and financial inequality. Since 2021, there have been protests around the event over police brutality, climate change and the war in Gaza. This year, posters have gone up calling for a boycott<\/a> because of the involvement of Jeff Bezos, the evening\u2019s honorary chair and main sponsor, pointing to allegations of worker exploitation, among other issues. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, has publicly announced he is not going to attend<\/a>.<\/p>\n Allowing the gala\u2019s profile and profit goals (the party raised $31 million in 2025<\/a>) to be downsized would take some of the pressure and attention off the museum and the brands that have supported it. Many of them have begun privately bemoaning the expense of the party, which involves not just buying tickets but also paying for celebrity guests to fly in with their entourages, stay in five-star hotels, wear custom looks and have their hair and makeup done. (This year\u2019s fashion sponsor, Saint Laurent, is underwriting only the exhibition catalog<\/a>.) Especially as the luxury industry enters a period of slower growth.<\/p>\n Still, Norwich said he doubted it would ever go entirely away. \u201cThere is an ongoing human need and fascination for such parties,\u201d Norwich said. \u201cCelebrity and fashion and the sparklers will always need to be seen in order to be believed and in order to be distinguished from the crowds.\u201d<\/p>\n In any case, even once the endowment is complete, more fund-raising will always be required. Operating costs continue to rise, there are special one-off investments required to maintain and expand a department, and the major exhibitions themselves require their own sponsors. But the amounts involved will not be as onerous, or as imperative. Indeed, it seems the very reason for the price inflation may have been to anticipate a time when it will no longer be necessary.<\/p>\n In a texted statement, Wintour simply said, \u201cAs a Met trustee, I have always felt strongly that the Costume Institute must stand on a solid footing.\u201d<\/p>\n Now it is almost there. Which means, when it comes to the party, \u201cit\u2019ll be interesting to see how it\u2019s going to evolve,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n Vanessa Friedman<\/p>\n Fashion critic<\/p>\n Ever since the Met Gala started raising ever more enormous sums for the Costume Institute, one of the questions people kept asking was how they could spend all that money (and whether they did). So when Andrew Bolton, the department\u2019s head curator, was talking me through his new exhibition earlier this month and mentioned as an aside that they\u2019d actually been saving a lot of the funds, my ears pricked up: that had all sorts of implications not just for the future of the department, but the future of the party itself.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/vanessa-friedman-thumbLarge.png\")
<\/p>\n