Fashion and the Art Museum: When Giorgio Armani Went to the Guggenheim

This article explores the collision of fashion with the modern art museum. Fashion exhibitions have been the source of much animosity and criticism among cultural arbiters and power brokers, while also being highly popular amongst museumgoers. Taking the controversial travelling Giorgio Armani retrospective initially staged at the Guggenheim Museum (New York) in 2000 as the focal point, the article argues how a non-avant-garde designer of Armani's stature troubles the steadfast cultural, conceptual and corporeal economies of the modern art museum.