The Metropolitan Museum of Art For Release: Immediate Contact: Harold Holzer Bernice Kwok-Gabel 50 YEARS OF METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S COSTUME INSTITUTE GALA With this year's "Party of the Year" to benefit The Costume Institute — to be held on December 7 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art ~ the gala event celebrates its 50th anniversary with Miuccia Prada, Paula Cussi, and Pia Getty as Co-Chairs . For five decades, the Party of the Year has defined fashion's role in New York City, philanthropy, the arts, and society. The theme of the 50th anniversary celebration will be Cubism and Fashion, which is the subject of the exhibition to be held in The Costume Institute from December 10, 1998, through March 14, 1999. The exhibition examines the properties of Cubism in art and its influence in fashion from 1908 to the present day. The Cubism and Fashion exhibition and Benefit for The Costume Institute are made possible by Prada. In 1948, the fashion industry, seeking to provide an annual supplement to the endowment of The Costume Institute ~ which was newly located at The Metropolitan Museum of Art ~ launched a benefit ball called the "Party of the Year." In a history now approaching the half century mark, the Party of the Year has been the grandest social event of the Manhattan calendar. Beginning with a midnight supper party at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center on November 18, 1948, for $50 per person, to its present format as a gala dinner at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Party of the Year has been the high-style barometer for New York fashion, art, and social life, now a $2,000- per-person dinner. Over the years, The Costume Institute gala has accommodated an outstanding cast of thousands, mingling art, fashion, and society. Among the celebrants have been Princess Diana, Brooke Astor, Bill Blass, Adam Gimbel, Halston and his Halstonettes, Henry and Nancy Kissinger, Christian Lacroix, Nan Kempner, Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, Mainbocher, Issey Miyake, Louise Nevelson, Mitzi Newhouse, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein, Valentino, Diana Vreeland, and Andy Warhol. Sites have included the Rainbow Room, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Americana — and now The Metropolitan Museum of Art's own Great Hall, Petrie Court, and Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing. (more) Communications Department 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028-0198 212-570-3951 Fax 212-472-2764 From its inception as a party exclusive to the fashion industry, the Party of the Year has emerged as the defining and most captivating event on the social calendar. The Party was held in the Metropolitan Museum's Great Hall for the first time in 1960. Later, sparkling crowds filled the Temple of Dendur as well. Under the aegis of Diana Vreeland and Mrs.Onassis, the Party of the Year entered the Jet Age, as fashion stars, European aristocracy, and socialites flew to New York on private planes and on the Concorde expressly for the one night of the gala. Pat Buckley (Mrs. William F., Jr.) was the Benefit Committee Chairman in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1996, Princess Diana flew to New York, arriving hours before the event, and wore the first dress created by John Galliano for Dior. In 1997, Elton John, Madonna, John Galliano, and Elizabeth Hurley were among the guests and Sting performed in an evening the New York Times dubbed "the party of the decade." Parties will come and go, but the ultimate event of post-war New York has been and continues to be the Party of the Year. Its 50th anniversary invites us all to recall some of the most glittering nights of our time, in fashion's grandest soiree — New York's gala of convergence, and every year's most festive night. ### November 30,1998 .