The fashion designer Iris van Herpen is coming to the Brooklyn Museum to work, in public, inside her own exhibition. From Friday, Oct. 30, through Sunday, Nov. 1, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, she will sit at a table in Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses and invite visitors to join her in pleating fabric by hand for a new couture look that is being made on the spot.

What visitors actually do

The program is called Sculpting the (Un)Spoken: A Participatory Performance with Iris van Herpen. Visitors who take a seat join the designer in slow, attentive handwork and in whatever conversation comes up while they do it. The museum describes the idea as couture made through an exchange rather than by a single hand: each participant's movements and the shape of their hands leave small variations in the texture of the dress.

The conversations become part of the garment too. After the performances, the most memorable moments from those exchanges will be embroidered inside the dress, so the finished piece carries the voices of the people who helped make it.

The rules

  • It is free with a ticket to Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses.
  • Participants must be 12 or older, and children must be with an adult at all times.
  • Space at the table is limited and first come, first served.
  • Participants are recorded.

The performances take place in the Rotunda on the museum's fifth floor and are produced by Beatrice Johnson, the museum's senior exhibition project manager.

The exhibition around it

Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses has been on view since May 16 and closes Dec. 6, 2026. The exhibition was organized by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and its Brooklyn presentation was organized by Matthew Yokobosky, the museum's senior curator of fashion and material culture. The three days at the end of October are the dates the museum has scheduled for the performances.

Getting there

The Brooklyn Museum is at 200 Eastern Parkway. The 2 and 3 trains stop at Eastern Parkway-Brooklyn Museum, at the museum's front steps.

Book a timed ticket for Sculpting the Senses through the museum's site for Oct. 30, Oct. 31 or Nov. 1, then head to the fifth-floor Rotunda between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Arriving early is the surest way to get a seat at the table.

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