The earliest museums were not organized around “art” as we understand it today; they were cabinets of curiosities—assemblages of shells, minerals, and botanical specimens valued for their beauty, rarity, taxonomic value, and capacity to render the world legible through material form. Matthew Yokobosky, a 2026 Iris Foundation Award recipient, draws from his own exhibition practice to examine how contemporary designers—such as Iris van Herpen—reconfigure the gallery as a twenty-first-century cabinet of wonders, which is activated by curatorial structure as well as the embodied presence of viewers whose looking completes and continually reanimates the work.

29th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
In 1997 Susan Weber created the Iris Foundation Awards to recognize scholars, patrons, and professionals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of decorative arts, design history, and material culture. Matthew Yokobosky will receive the Iris Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholar on April 27. Proceeds benefit the Bard Graduate Center Scholarship Fund. To find out more about the Iris Foundation Awards, visit us online or call 212.501.3071.

Matthew Yokobosky is senior curator of fashion and material culture at the Brooklyn Museum, where he has shaped landmark exhibitions that merge fashion, design, and contemporary culture. Across two decades, he has led the curatorial and exhibition development of more than one hundred projects, including Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present (2009–10), Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern (2017), David Bowie Is (2018), Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion (2019–20), Studio 54: Night Magic (2020), and Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams (2021–22). His curatorial practice emphasizes the immersive potential of exhibition design, bringing fine art, decorative arts, and couture into new dialogues with visual culture. Yokobosky curated Solid Gold (2024–25), marking the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary and advancing conversations around craft, material innovation, and the applied arts. He is the organizing curator of Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses (2026), which considers couture as a site where science, technology, and traditional handicraft converge. Previously, he developed major exhibitions for the Whitney Museum of American Art, spanning moving-image installation, live art, and the history of American cinema. In 2023 he was named a Chevalier in the National Order of Merit by the president of France.