Relive Taylor Swift's many eras at the Museum of Arts and Design

Jun 11, 2023

Visit Taylor Swift: Storyteller at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City, and you'll learn right away what Swift fans have known all along: Devotion to Swift in all her forms is not defined by her music alone. In an age characterized by viral images, her eras — all 10 of them, one for each album — are carefully crafted aesthetics created in part by Swift's costuming and vivid imagery.

Walk up the stairs to the start of the exhibition, and you'll see one of Swift's guitars. A collection of jewelry from various music videos, including "Bejeweled," lines the left wall. The lyrics to her heartbreak ballad "All Too Well" are plastered across it. Directly in front lies a small collection of outfits from the self-referential "Look What You Made Do" music video and others from "Shake It Off." It is not unlike arriving at The Eras Tour, Swift's stadium tour devoted to celebrating all of her past selves. Many of the outfits are the very same that Swift and her fans(opens in a new tab) recreate in homage.

"It's all things Taylor here all the time," MAD's director Tim Rodgers told me over the phone.

Taylor Swift: Storyteller showcases outfits and props spanning her acclaimed career from custom cowboy boots circa her 2006 debut album to a glittering ensemble from her recent "Bejeweled" music video. The "Lavender Haze" jacket and iconic "22" outfit are among some of fans favorite looks to recreate at live shows, and at the exhibition they can see them in even closer detail. Some of these, like the "not a lot going on at the moment" t-shirt from "22," are looks a devout fan would make the pilgrimage to see. Among fans, a seemingly unremarkable look can take on outsized meaning as part of the shared language of fandom.

It's this visual storytelling that drew MAD to the idea of an exhibition devoted to Swift. "We were fascinated by the way in which she was using costumes in order to tell the stories that she was creating in her lyrics and in her songs," explained Rodgers. "We wanted to highlight her as a storyteller, the person who's writing the lyrics, who's performing the lyrics, but then is taking it as another step, and actually performing as the characters in her lyrics."

Swift's team reached out to the head of exhibitions at MAD earlier this year and asked, "Do you want to do a Taylor Swift exhibition?" At first, Rodgers thought it was a joke, but it of course ended up being legitimate. "It was about two months away from when they thought we should open the exhibition. For us, that's unheard of. It usually takes us two, sometimes three years, to execute an exhibition," said Rodgers.

But MAD was able to pull off the quick turnaround because Swift has a full-time archivist on her team. All of the clothing and most of the props that appear in music videos, as well as some of the costumes from live performances, are all archived with the information about who made them, when they were made, when the items were worn, and when they were shown in music videos. "It was like working with another museum," explained Rodgers. Swift's archivist, along with museum staff, worked together to curate the exhibition.

I went to the exhibition the Friday after Swift's MetLife concerts, and the Swift bubble had yet to burst in New York. The exhibition, which opened on May 20 — a week before the MetLife shows — and runs through September 4, attracted 3,685 visitors on the weekend of The Eras Tour's New Jersey stop. For these visitors, it was not enough to see Swift perform her past eras in concert; they needed to see the source material in person.

Two teenagers posed on either side of Swift's silver bejeweled guitar from her Speak Now world tour. Their father crouched in front of them to take the shot, but quickly one of the teens critiqued his upward angle and he readjusted. Another teen with her Eras Tour tote in tow took a selfie imitating the pose of a mannequin displaying Swift's "Out Of The Woods" sparkling jumpsuit (opens in a new tab). Another duo of young women giggled when they saw the banjo from the "Willow" music video. All the while, several Taylor Swift songs and their accompanying music videos played on loop on two large screens on either side of the exhibition.

If you think fans are attending this exhibition passively, think again. One teenager excitedly explained, from memory, the lore of every single item to her father. The "Willow" aficionados who had shared a giggle over Swift's banjo moved through the exhibition slowly, carefully considering each instrument and costume. A family sat through 46 minutes of Swift's music videos.

On TikTok, Swifties document their trips to the exhibition for other fans. One video posted by @aabigall13(opens in a new tab) — whose bio reads "Taylor Swift enthusiast" and contains two Eras Tour dates — opens with the text, "perfect day in NYC" before showing clips of what the exhibit has to offer. The caption reads, "this museum is evveryythinggg!!!" It's garnered over 70,000 likes. The exhibition taps MAD into the rich online fandom ecosystem.

"We're fans of the Taylor Swift fans," said Rodgers. "They're a really polite, lovely audience."

Rodgers thinks fandom has the potential to draw people to museums that might not usually go. "It's magic for a museum director to see an audience that's new to your institution go to different shows that they didn't expect to see and enjoy them," he told me.

But the spectacle of Swift goes beyond her dedicated fanbase. Culture at large is frankly obsessed with her. Just look at the reaction to her rumored relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy or the extensive media coverage of The Eras Tour (I've written 22 pieces on Swift for Mashable).

As I stood at a case displaying the shirt Swift wore for the promo of Folklore, a middle-aged couple standing next to me seemed drawn into the spectacle, not as fans but as observers of the intensity surrounding it. As we admired the shirt, the man turned to the woman and said, "Did you hear fans are selling jars of rain from her show on eBay?"