The Costume Institute’s annual spring exhibition continues to raise a fundamental question: Is fashion up to the serious analysis vested in other disciplines that populate art museums? Show by spectacular show, the answer has been yes. This year, the Institute’s curator in charge, Andrew Bolton, makes a different case. The show suggests that in the process of elevating fashion to art, we often strip it of the very thing that is intrinsic to it. Clothing is not just a visual artifact, Bolton posits, it is something worn, lived in, and experienced by a body. To that point, the exhibition “Costume Art” pairs artworks and garments that address a topology of body types: the Naked Body, the Abstract Body, the Aging Body, the Pregnant Body, among others. The show also inaugurates the huge new Condé M. Nast Galleries—the Costume Institute’s swanky new permanent home, adjacent to the Great Hall. —Elena Clavarino