The concept of, and practice of, religious pilgrimage is at play in the curatorial pedagogy of the exhibition, as the audience journeys from the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met Fifth Avenue (holding over forty Pontifical vestments from the Sacristy of the Sistine Chapel), continuing through the Byzantine Art galleries, and concluding in the Met’s extensive Medieval galleries. The second stage of the exhibition culminates at the Met Cloisters in northern Manhattan where fashion collections inspired by religious orders were installed within the medieval cloistered gardens.

Proposing a fruitful dialogue between fashion and religious artifacts from the Met’s permanent collection, Bolton opens up a conversation between the old and the new, by inviting the viewer to engage haute couture alongside tapestries, stained glass, mosaics, reliquaries, altarpieces, and crucifixes in the midst of the Met’s archival wealth, seeing the permanent collection anew. In this way, the Met’s visual library contextualizes the imagery and symbolism of the designers’ inspirations for contemporary audiences.

An introductory essay in the exhibition catalogue features an essay by Catholic theologian David Tracy, entitled: “The Catholic Imagination: The Example of Michelangelo.” Tracy underscores that Catholic theology finds the Good, the True and the Beautiful in matter, which participates in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful of God. He asserts that these beautiful garments and objects all aim to express the Beauty of God by analogy — as created things. 

Quoting sociologist Father Andrew Greeley on the significance of the “Catholic imagination,” Bolton summarizes: “‘Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deep and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation.’”