Bloom!

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil, nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like ones of these," Matthew 6:28–29. Bloom! is a celebration of flowers in fashion. A splendid array of flowers has always dwelled in the wardrobe, confirming that human striving for magnificence is only the simulation of nature's abundant beauty. To propose flowers in costume is, of course, to document only one of the countless floral manifestations of the Museum. Throughout The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bowers and bouquets of flowers thrive in paintings, pop into sculptural form, lend enchantment to porcelain vases and stained glass, and enhance the lush environments of manuscripts and tapestries. Painter Georgia O'Keeffe, no stranger to the singular beauty of flowers, proposed that "Nobody sees a flower really, it is so small, we haven't time." Herewith, we insist on flinding times to look at the flowers of fashion. "Bloom!," on view from March 30 to August 20, 1995, created fertile gardens of floral apparel around specific flowers—rose, lily, tulip—and floral subjects, including naturalistic botanical categories, stylized exotic fantasies, black "fleurs du mal," and a metamorphosed garden of women virtually transformed into flowers. [This book was originally published in 1995 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]