The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British fashion designer John Galliano have called off an exhibition honouring Galliano that was planned for next spring, following a wave of opposition in light of the designer’s history of antisemitic statements.
In a statement on Monday (31 August), Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Met, said: “Following thoughtful discussions with John Galliano, we have together decided not to proceed with the exhibition.”
Plans for the exhibition were first made public on 31 July. The exhibition would have opened in early May 2027, coinciding with the annual Met Gala, the benefit soirée for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute, which typically draws hundreds of celebrities and raises tens of millions of dollars for the institution. It was due to remain on view in the new Condé Nast Galleries just off the Met’s Great Hall until January 2028. According to the exhibition announcement, the Costume Institute has the largest collection of Galliano's work in the world, spanning 1984 to 2024.
However, news of the exhibition quickly sparked outrage due to Galliano’s history of antisemitic statements. In 2011, a French tribunal convicted him of an antisemitic hate crime after he made horrendous comments about Jews and Asians to a couple dining at a restaurant near his home in Paris. In footage of a separate incident that emerged around the time of his arrest, Galliano tells diners at the same restaurant “I love Hitler”, that their parents would have been “gassed” and that “people like you would be dead today”.
Following the emergence of that video, Galliano was fired from his role as the creative director of Dior, a role he had held since 1997. After his conviction, he went into rehab and attended meetings about Judaism with rabbis and a former leader of the Anti-Defamation League. He made a remarkable fashion-world comeback in 2014, when he was named creative director of Maison Margiela, a post he held until 2024. Champions of his work over the years have included Anna Wintour, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue, a trustee of the Met and the chair of the Met Gala since 1999, and Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute and lead organiser of the planned exhibition, John Galliano: Horizons.
“I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. I also recognise and respect that an exhibition honouring my work would be painful for some,” Galliano said in a statement on Monday (31 August). “I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities, and I remain deeply sorry for it. I understand that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time.”
Wintour added: “John's decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is. I believe this is the right decision, and both he and the museum have my full support.”
According to The New York Times, the decision to cancel the exhibition came just hours before planned meetings on Monday of select members of the museum’s board and the full Met leadership and board of trustees to discuss the exhibition’s future and matters related to the Costume Institute. Ahead of those meetings, a growing chorus of critics had expressed concern privately or come out publicly against the exhibition.
On 28 August, The New York Times reported that Julie Menin, the speaker of the New York City Council, had written a letter to Bolton, Hollein and Wintour describing the decision to honour Galliano as “a serious mistake”. Arne Glimcher, the founder of Pace Gallery, wrote to Hollein and David Breslin, a curator of Modern and contemporary art at the Met, to articulate his concerns about the exhibition. “I don’t think you have considered the cost of this action and its reverberations to come,” he wrote in an email, according to the Times. He also implied that he and his wife might change their plans to bequest works from their personal collection to the Met in light of the exhibition.
In addition to anchoring the fashion and media spectacle that is the Met Gala, the Costume Institute’s exhibitions are often among the most popular at the Met in any given year. The current Costume Institute show, Costume Art (until 10 January 2027), launched in May with a gala whose dress code and theme was “fashion is art”. Galliano would have been just the third living fashion designer honoured with a solo exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute.
