iBrooklyn MuseumProspect Heights, Brooklyn
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses
North American debut of Dutch couturier Iris van Herpen, with 140+ sculptural haute couture creations shown alongside contemporary art, design, and natural history specimens.
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One dress in this show is alive. Iris van Herpen's 2025 Living Algae look holds about 125 million bioluminescent algae, grown in seawater, and they glow blue when the wearer moves. It is one of more than 140 couture pieces on the fifth floor, the first major New York showing of her work.
The chapters run from water to the cosmos by way of skeletons, fear and growth, with fossils, coral, beetles and a 1732 Ovid set beside the dresses. In the rotunda the museum rebuilt her Amsterdam atelier: you look down microscopes and handle fabric samples, which Interview's writer said "feels almost like a science museum." Near the end, a wall of photos shows who has worn her work, from Lady Gaga to Tilda Swinton.
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Bedatri Choudhury called it "an exercise in constant wonder and awe." Timed tickets are $30 for adults, include general admission and enter every 15 minutes; members go free. It closes December 6.
Look for
The Living Algae dress
Look for the 2025 look holding about 125 million bioluminescent algae in seawater, which light up blue as the wearer moves.
The Skeleton dress
A 2011 copper-plated, 3D-printed dress with its ribs splayed open, shown beside a 180-million-year-old marine reptile fossil; the Inquirer found it "at once exquisite and slightly eerie".
Bird
Hand-sewn layers of laser-cut silicone over ivory cotton, with three 3D-printed bird skulls hidden among the "feathers".
Seed of Narcissus
In the atelier rotunda, a crystal cocoon coated in beeswax honeycomb that thousands of bees built over several months.
The Cosmic Bloom gallery
Multicolored dresses hang from the ceiling, some mannequins upside down, to a soundscape by Salvador Breed.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
- Teenagers
With kids
Ages 4 to 12 pay $12 and teens $21. The atelier room has microscopes and fabric samples to touch, and the museum runs stroller tours of the show.
Also at Brooklyn Museum
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the SensesRhododendrites / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Splendido, As Seen by Chris RhodesCourtesy of Aperture
- Pierre Huyghe: UUmweltCourtesy of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Brice Marden: I Am Plane ImageArtwork © 2026 Estate of Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Owen Conway
- Brooklyn MuseumJim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain