Photo credit: Dimitrios Kambouris / Staff

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that its annual Met Gala will return 2021 and 2022.

Met Gala to return with two-part celebration of American fashion https://t.co/8xPJl1dTM0

— Guardian Fashion (@GuardianFashion) April 12, 2021

Reportedly, the two galas will be “more intimate” than its previous events. The September 2021 event of course will have to follow the government’s COVID-19 guidelines, but organizers are hoping to bring out a larger number of guest, similar to previous galas.

Alongside the galas will be a two-part exhibition. The first, entitled “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion,” starts September 18 and will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Costume Institute. The second, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” will open May 5th, 2022 and will be curated by film directors “presenting narratives that relate to the complex and layered histories of those spaces.” Both exhibitions will close September 5, 2022.

Queen and Slim’s Melina Matsoukas was contacted and asked to assist with some of the content that would evolve around the galleries. Other production designers from Selma and When They See Us will also be collaborators.

“Fashion is both a harbinger of cultural shifts and a record of the forces, beliefs, and events that shape our lives,” Max Hollein, director of the Met, said in a statement. “This two-part exhibition will consider how fashion reflects evolving notions of identity in America and will explore a multitude of perspectives through presentations that speak to some of the complexities of history with powerful immediacy.”

“Over the past year, because of the pandemic, the connections to our homes have become more emotional, as have those to our clothes,” Bolton added. “For American fashion, this has meant an increased emphasis on sentiment over practicality.”