Andrew John Bolton OBE (born 1966) is a British museum curator. He is the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the department that organizes the museum's annual Costume Institute Gala (commonly known as the Met Gala).
Early life and education
Bolton was born in 1966 in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. He studied anthropology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, graduating with an undergraduate degree in 1987 and later completing a master's degree. His academic background in anthropology and non-Western art is frequently cited as an influence on his curatorial approach.
Career
Bolton began his museum career at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where he worked for approximately nine years, including as a curatorial assistant in the Far Eastern Department and later as a senior research fellow in contemporary fashion. During this period he also curated exhibitions at the London College of Fashion.
He joined the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2002 as an associate curator and was named curator in 2006. Following the retirement of Harold Koda, Bolton was announced in September 2015 as Koda's successor, and he became Curator in Charge in January 2016. He holds the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge title.
Bolton has curated or co-curated numerous Costume Institute exhibitions, including:
- AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion (2006)
- Poiret: King of Fashion (2007)
- Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy (2008)
- The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion (2009)
- American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity (2010)
- Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011)
- Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (2012)
- Punk: Chaos to Couture (2013)
- Charles James: Beyond Fashion (2014)
- China: Through the Looking Glass (2015)
- Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology (2016)
- Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between (2017)
- Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination (2018)
- Camp: Notes on Fashion (2019)
- About Time: Fashion and Duration (2020)
- In America: A Lexicon of Fashion and In America: An Anthology of Fashion (2021–2022)
- Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty (2023)
- Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (2024)
- Superfine: Tailoring Black Style (2025)
Several of these exhibitions rank among the most attended in the museum's history; Heavenly Bodies (2018) drew more than 1.6 million visitors across the Met Fifth Avenue and the Met Cloisters. Bolton's exhibitions are often noted for combining scholarly research with theatrical presentation.
Recognition
Bolton received the Vilcek Prize in Fashion in 2015 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to art and fashion. He has also received awards from the Costume Society of America and the Association of Art Museum Curators, among others.
Other work
Bolton is featured alongside Anna Wintour in Andrew Rossi's 2016 documentary The First Monday in May, which chronicles the staging of the Costume Institute Gala. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 books, including exhibition catalogues such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2011) and Punk: Chaos to Couture (2013).
Personal life
Since 2011, Bolton has lived in Manhattan with fashion designer Thom Browne, his partner.
Sources consulted include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Times, the Vilcek Foundation, and other published institutional and press materials. Minor discrepancies exist among sources regarding some dates (for example, whether Bolton was named curator in 2005 or 2006); the article follows the museum's own account.
