Wexner Prize Lecture 2004

Learn more about Issey Miyake's revolutionary approach to clothing design at this lecture by Harold Koda, curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Meet Mr. Koda at a reception in his honor at 3 pm in Mershon Auditorium lobby. Mr. Koda places Issey Miyake's distinctive body of work into the context of contributions from iconic 20th-century designers Paul Poiret, Madeleine Vionnet, Gabrielle Chanel, and Cristobal Balenciaga. He then focuses on Miyake's astonishing ability to transform the two-dimensional planarity of cloth into unprecedented three-dimensional topography. Such designs are possible only because of Miyake's consistent questioning of the accepted principles of dressmaking and tailoring.

Recognized as one of the most respected authorities in the world of art, design, and fashion, Harold Koda is a costume historian whose career in the field has spanned two decades. After serving for four years in the early 1990s as associate curator in the Costume Institute, he left to pursue a degree in landscape architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He rejoined the Metropolitan Museum of Art as curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute in 2000.

Mr. Koda is responsible for conceptualizing and organizing the critically acclaimed exhibition Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed (2001ñ02), as well as the influential and more recent Goddess: The Classical Mode (2003). He curated Giorgio Armani (2000) with Germano Celant for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. He has also co-authored numerous books, including catalogues for several landmark Metropolitan Museum exhibitions he organized with Richard Martin; contributed articles to Textile and Text and publications such as the New York Times Magazine; and lectured widely.