This thesis is about The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, a 2009 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. It begins with an introduction of literature relevant to the display of fashion and fashion photography in the museum space as well as notions of highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow, and Nobrow. It continues with an exploration of fashion's and fashion photography's historical and contemporary associations with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums, a review of the critical responses to early fashion and fashion photography exhibitions, and an examination of how fashion and fashion photography are consistent with John Seabrook's concept of Nobrow. It then surveys The Model as Muse exhibition, using it to give a brief history of fashion photography and to give a critique of the exhibition by examining issues relevant to it. Next, it addresses issues of gender as they are related to the Supermodel and society. It concludes with an examination of the changing concept of the muse throughout history and its culmination in the model, an examination of the three waves of feminism, and an analysis of the Supermodel's position in society and the attitudes people have toward her.
