Embodied
An Evening of Art and Fashion
Join us for an evening of inspiration at M2 Gallery on Friday May 8th as we celebrate with the best and brightest of the Little Rock arts and fashion scene. Follow along as we prepare for our third annual charity event inspired by the 2026 Met Gala!
SoMa 501
Partnering Charity
SoMa 501 is a nonprofit Main Street America program dedicated to promoting the South Main neighborhood of Little Rock through economic development, historic preservation, thoughtful design, and community-driven programming.
Our mission is to strengthen and celebrate the district by supporting small businesses, improving the built environment, and creating vibrant public spaces. The Design Committee plays a critical role in this work by enhancing the visual identity and physical character of SoMa.
From overseeing streetscape improvements and beautification efforts to commissioning public art installations like murals and functional sculptures, the committee helps ensure that SoMa remains welcoming, creative, and distinctly reflective of the community it serves.
The Theme
Please enjoy learning more about the conception of the 2026 Met Gala theme.
Below are excerpts from Vogue.com, the full article can be viewed here.
Fashion is coming out of the basement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Announced today, “Costume Art,” the spring 2026 exhibition at the Costume Institute, will mark the inauguration of the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall. “It’s a huge moment for the Costume Institute,” says curator in charge Andrew Bolton. “It will be transformative for our department, but I also think it’s going to be transformative to fashion more generally—the fact that an art museum like The Met is actually giving a central location to fashion.”
To mark the momentous occasion, Bolton has conceived an exhibition that addresses “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,” by pairing paintings, sculptures, and other objects spanning the 5,000 years of art represented in The Met, alongside historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute.
“What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body”
Bolton says. “It’s the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: I know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked,” he continues. “It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”
Traditionally, Bolton admits, Costume Institute shows have emphasized clothing’s visual appeal, with the mannequins disappearing behind or underneath garments. His bold idea for “Costume Art” is to insist on the significance of the body, or “the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.” Fashion, he insists, actually “has an edge on art because it is about one’s lived, embodied experience.”
He’s organized the exhibition around a series of thematic body types loosely divided into three categories. These include bodies omnipresent in art, like the classical body and the nude body; other kinds of bodies that are more often overlooked, like aging bodies and pregnant bodies; and still more that are universal, like the anatomical body. Bolton’s is a much more expansive view of the corporeal than the fashion industry itself often promotes, with its rail-thin models and narrow size ranges.