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Sneakerheads and design nerds: The Shed has your next big winter outing.
Virgil Abloh: The Codes opens December 10, bringing nearly 1,000 objects from archive of the late fashion icon—who founded the Milan-based luxury label Off-White in 2013 and served as the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection until his untimely death at age 41 in November 2021—to Manhattan for an exhibition spread across 28,000 square feet. Running through January 18, 2027, the show will fill The Shed’s McCourt and Darla Moore Gallery with a deep dive into a mind that refused to stay in one lane.
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Presented by the Virgil Abloh Foundation in partnership with Nike, the exhibition will showcase fashion, footwear, art, architecture, graphic design and music. Curators Chloe and Mahfuz Sultan have assembled finished works alongside prototypes, sketches and archival materials, giving visitors a look at both the objects and the experiments that helped bring them into being.
The title refers to the recurring ideas, visual strategies and methods that connect Abloh’s work across disciplines. Visitors can expect an exploration of remixing, collaboration and the possibilities of putting familiar things in unexpected company—an approach that connected luxury fashion with street culture and made creative boundaries feel decidedly optional.
One particularly intriguing installation will recreate Abloh’s Paris office at Pont Neuf. Known for its open-door ethos, the space served as a gathering point for collaborators and emerging creatives. Here, visitors will get a window into the environment where those exchanges happened. On the hands-on side, an interactive media lab will give visitors access to selected raw design files, inviting them to experiment and reinterpret the material themselves.
Naturally, there’s also shopping. A dedicated retail experience co-curated by JJJJound founder Justin Saunders will offer merchandise developed in connection with the exhibition, with details still to come. Conversations, performances, workshops and other public programs are also planned.
“Virgil believed in opening doors and making knowledge accessible,” Shannon Abloh, founder of the Virgil Abloh Archive and Foundation, said in the announcement.
Students and educators can attend for free with a valid ID and a timed reservation and visitors under 18 can enter for free. General admission costs $25 and tickets are on sale now. (An $85 VIP option includes flexible arrival on the selected date, express entry and an exclusive merchandise item.)
All ticket proceeds benefit the Virgil Abloh Foundation, supporting its work to create opportunities for emerging creatives.
Virgil Abloh: The Codes is far from the first NYC exhibition to celebrate the style icon's career and legacy. Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech, the first posthumous retrospective of the fashion designer, took over Brooklyn Museum in the summer of 2022, showcasing two decades of Abloh's work.