Costume Institute Chief Harold Koda Finds S&M in Every New YorkerName: Harold Koda
Age: 56
Job: Curator in charge, Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art; curator of “Nan Kempner: American Chic,” opening there today
Neighborhood: Upper East Side
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Dead and real: Andy Warhol.
Living and fictional: Detective Stabler, Law & Order: SVU.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
Deeda Blair has a lobster salad that should be luxury taxed. But there are also the meatballs at Rao’s, a gastronomic anomaly of Italian home-style cooking. Sure, they are the size of softballs like you’d expect, but so light and airy they would float off your plate if they weren’t so weighed down with sauce!
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
Convince people that clothes can be art. Oops, that’s not a sentence.