Cleveland Museum of Art expands fashion focus as curator Darnell-Jamal Lisby builds exhibition program
A curatorial role designed to connect garments, images and objects across centuries
The Cleveland Museum of Art has been expanding how it presents fashion inside a comprehensive fine-arts museum, with a curatorial position dedicated to fashion scholarship and exhibition-making. The museum’s fashion curator, Darnell-Jamal Lisby, joined the institution in 2021 and has since developed projects that place clothing and accessories in direct conversation with artworks and material culture already held by the museum.
Lisby’s stated curatorial remit centers on fashion studies that connect with a museum collection spanning thousands of years. His academic background includes degrees from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and his professional experience includes work at institutions with major fashion and design holdings, including Cooper Hewitt and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Recent exhibitions show a shift from “costume” toward cross-department collaboration
At Cleveland, Lisby has been credited with organizing or curating multiple fashion-focused exhibitions, including Egyptomania: Fashion’s Conflicted Obsession and Korean Couture: Generations of Revolution. He also helped organize the museum’s presentation of The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, an exhibition that brought together photography, film and fashion histories and involved collaboration among curatorial and conservation staff.
That model—linking fashion to photography, conservation practices and broader art-historical narratives—signals an approach in which garments are treated as research objects and exhibition anchors rather than standalone spectacle.
“Renaissance to Runway” becomes the museum’s largest-ever fashion exhibition
The museum’s most ambitious fashion effort to date has been Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses, described by the institution as its largest fashion exhibition. The show runs from November 9, 2025, through February 1, 2026, and is installed in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall.
The exhibition brings more than 100 modern and contemporary Italian fashions and accessories into dialogue with Italian fine, decorative and textile arts from the 1400s through the early 1600s. The checklist includes approximately 80 ensembles and garments along with about 40 jewelry pieces, drawn from a range of Italian houses including Armani, Gucci, Valentino, Versace, Ferragamo, Bvlgari and Buccellati.
- Exhibition dates: Nov. 9, 2025–Feb. 1, 2026
- Scope: 100+ fashions and accessories in dialogue with Renaissance- to early Baroque-era artworks
- Scale: about 80 ensembles/garments and 40 jewelry pieces
Programming positions fashion as public scholarship
Programming tied to the exhibition included tours scheduled multiple days each week during the run, and lectures presented by Lisby focused on historical themes such as color, luxury and family networks in Italian fashion. A ticketed museum social event also marked the opening period, reflecting an institutional strategy that pairs exhibition scholarship with public-facing programming.
Across recent projects, the museum’s fashion initiatives have been built around pairing garments with objects, images and decorative arts to frame fashion within longer art-historical timelines.
Together, the exhibitions and related events indicate an ongoing effort by the Cleveland Museum of Art to formalize fashion within its exhibition calendar—using a dedicated curator to structure research, interpretation and cross-collection connections.