NEW YORK (AP) — The new Met Gala co-chairs have been announced, and it's a high-profile quartet: Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman will join Vogue's Anna Wintour to host the star-studded event next May. Williams, who has never hosted before, takes on the role seven years after her younger sister and fellow tennis champion, Serena, was co-chair. Beyoncé was honorary chair in 2013, and Kidman co-chaired in 2003 and 2005. Wintour, of course, oversees the annual event, a fundraiser that last year brought a record $31 million to the coffers of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.

The museum also announced Wednesday a host committee for the gala, chaired by designer Anthony Vaccarello and filmmaker Zoë Kravitz, and including musicians Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, LISA, Sam Smith and Yseult; dancer Misty Copeland; actors Teyana Taylor, Elizabeth Debicki, Gwendoline Christie and Lena Dunham; basketball player A'ja Wilson; models Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser and Lauren Wasser; Vogue editor Chloe Malle; and the artist Anna Weyant.

Still to be announced: the dress code for the May 4th gala. But it will be in keeping with the theme of “Costume Art,” announced last month as the institute's next spring exhibition.

The exhibition aims to celebrate “the clothed body” as it appears in art through the centuries. It will do so by pairing garments with objects from around the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with different art forms.

“It's an exhibition that can really live in fascinating ways in the museum and can draw from all the different areas of our collection: paintings, sculptures, drawings,” the museum's general director, Max Hollein, said in an interview last month.

The exhibition, overseen as always by the Costume Institute's curator in charge, Andrew Bolton, will be organized thematically by different body types. It will include the “Naked Body” and the “Classical Body,” for example, but also less traditional themes such as the “Pregnant Body” and the “Aging Body.”

The new exhibition will also have a striking new home. “Costume Art” will open a new gallery space occupying about 12,000 square feet (1,115 square meters), right next to the museum's Great Hall, giving fashion a prominent space in the museum that will also help control congestion at busy exhibitions. The new Conde M galleries. Nast, created from what was formerly the museum's retail store, will house not only all of the Clothing Institute's spring exhibitions, but also other displays from different parts of the museum.

Bolton has said that the gallery space "will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that recognizes the critical role that fashion plays not only within the history of art, but also within contemporary culture."

Venus Williams returned to playing competitively in July at age 45 after almost a year and a half away from the circuit, although she had never retired. She became the oldest player to play singles at the US Open since 1981. Serena Williams, for her part, recently dismissed the idea that she might be preparing to return to tennis.

“Costume Art” will open to the public on May 10, 2026 and will be available until January 10, 2027.

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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.