The Costume Institute just announced their Spring 2010 exhibition and the hosts for the Gala Benefit (to be held on May 3.) This year Anna will be sharing the duties with Oprah and The Gap’s Patrick Robinson.

Oprah and Anna together—that’s like some sort of world domination thing going on, right? Let’s just hope they can play nice in the planning process as these are two women who don’t often have to share.

This year’s exhibit sounds super interesting: American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity. It will shine the spotlight on different archetypes of American femininity through dress and “reveal how the American woman intitiated style revolutions that mirrored her social, political, and sexual emancipation.”

The big day is finally here and since we have a previous evening commitment, Gossip Girl, we spent the morning with Marc and Anna and Hamish and Harold and even a model or two at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibit itself is spectacular. It opens with life size elephant cut outs and a mannequin wearing Dovima’s Avedon Dior. A hallway of Irving Penns pays tributes to the originals - Suzy Parker, Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh and co. There are New Look coats and dresses, Charles James and a Madame Gres. You turn the corner to David Baileys, iconic images of Twiggy and Veruschka wielding her shotgun. Music blares, “Talking ‘bout my generation,” and the mannequins wear Cardins, Paco Rabbanne link dresses and a YSL Mondrian. Then it’s onto Lauren Hutton, Rene Russo, Jerry Hall and unreal Helmut Newton photographs before turning the corner to Versace clad models carrying, seriously, broken champagne bottles. Lastly, the supermodels and the 90s in a graffitied room stocked with Marc Jacobs’ Perry Ellis, Ellen Von Unwerth photography and mind-boggling pictures of Kate.

It’s this room, according to the Costume Institute’s Director Harold Koda, that Anna didn’t feel was “quite grunge enough” late Friday night. And so Oscar winning set director, John Meyer, stayed up Friday and into Saturday, tagging the walls with “Daria,” “Twiggy,” “Kate,” etc in army green, silver and black spray paint - it’s the best part of the whole thing.

Marc said he’s, “honored, flattered, thrilled, grateful to have anything to do with this institution,” and called his involvement, twenty years after his first Met, “a dream come true.” And Koda said he was a pleasure to work with - his only demand that “the exhibit be lively.”

We could gush some more, but basically, the exhibition lives up to the standard set by 06’s Anglomania. So go.

Some fun news, thanks to WWD, especially if you’re looking for something to click on for a few hours today:

The Costume Institute’s digitized most of its incredibly extensive archive, complete with images and corresponding information, onto their site, which now includes roughly 31,000 pieces of historical clothing.

It’s not very browse-friendly (you can see the front page takes you to many shoe buckles…) but we suggest typing in the names of designers’ work you may not be as familiar with for full effect.

Our first choice was Charles Frederick Worth, which brought us to these 1887 gowns (strictly for balls, you know) - the best part? You can actually zoom in on sections of enlarged images, kind of like shopping on Anthropologie, except smarter.

Have fun.