Brooklyn's Couture Collection Moves to the Met

The Brooklyn Museum has become nothing more than a storage closet for its "storied couture clothing collection," but now the Brooklyn Paper explains the "cash-strapped" institution is "unloading" the 105-year-old cache to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The BMA, which hadn't displayed the clothing since 1991, won't receive any money, but it's saving some, since it will no longer pay for the storage and care. The Met, with its funding (not to mention 10 times the BMA's visitors) can mount a proper exhibition of what's being called "one of the world’s best collections of American fashion" (the NY Times reported that its "largely assembled from the closets of grand ladies of Brooklyn and Manhattan"). The paper also notes that while the "Met’s Costume Institute will own, curate and preserve the pieces, the two museums will collaborate on a bi-borough costume show in 2010."