The Labyrinth: Metaphor and Method

Abstract

In October 2000 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City debuted a retrospective dedicated to the Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The exhibition was co-curated by Germano Celant, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim, and Harold Koda, then Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and was designed by the stage director Robert Wilson. Giorgio Armani subsequently embarked on a five-and-a-half-year-long international tour that included stops at the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, London’s Royal Academy, the National Roman Museum Baths of Diocletian, and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, among others. The inaugural exhibition at the Guggenheim was the subject of criticism and controversy regarding a reported $15 million donation to the museum from Giorgio Armani S.p.A. As with other monographic exhibitions of contemporary fashion designers, Giorgio Armani was perceived as an advertisement rather than a retrospective.