In an interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, Met Gala co-chair Anna Wintour announced “Fasc-isms” as the theme for this year’s highly anticipated event.
“The popular 20th-century movement has been reduced to stereotypes and this is the time to revisit innovations of the misunderstood period of art,” Wintour said on the popular podcast that helped propel President Trump to the White House during the recent election. “Fascists are not a monolith,” she added.
Long considered taboo in art museums, the topic of fascism is now in the spotlight as government officials are brushing up on how to gut the institutions of democracy in favor of the more corporatist system that increasingly favors the wealthy and powerful.
“The art community has long been familiar with the oligarch-controlled spaces of culture, but now that the government is catching up to the art world. We think the art community can be at the forefront of this new wave,” Met Gala honorary guest chair Marco Rubio explained during a press conference this afternoon. Rubio was joined at the press event on the steps of the museum by art collector and Republican donor Norman Braman.
The theme, the museum said, hopes to diversify our understanding of fascisms and how they continue to be generative underground movements that resist stereotypes. An accompanying exhibition will display items from the Met Museum’s “frankly shockingly extensive” collection of black leather riding boots, a press release said.
The museum also announced that anyone caught trying to sneak into the elite affair would be deported to a super prison in El Salvador, regardless of immigration status.