Galliano and the Met call off 2027 exhibition following backlash

By Jenna Zucker

New York, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Fashion designer John Galliano and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art have scrapped a planned 2027 retrospective in his honor after an outcry over plans to honor a designer whose career was derailed by antisemitic remarks.

“After much reflection and discussion with The Met and all those involved, I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time,” Galliano said in a joint statement with the museum that he also posted on Instagram. 

“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,” he wrote.

Galliano’s career was upended in 2011 after a video circulated showing him hurling antisemitic abuse at people in a Paris bar. Dior fired Galliano, then its head designer, and a French court later found him guilty of antisemitic behavior and handed him a suspended $8,421 fine. He apologized at his trial.

Galliano returned to fashion in 2014 as artistic director of Maison Margiela, where he spent a decade before leaving the fashion house in 2024.

The cancellation represents a setback for Galliano, one of fashion’s most influential designers, whose planned Met retrospective would have been among the industry’s highest-profile endorsements since his 2011 downfall.

The eight-month exhibition was scheduled to open alongside the 2027 Met Gala, the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition traditionally held on the first Monday in May. In 2027, that falls on the evening of May 3, the start of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“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’s statement read.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL TIMING SPURS BACKLASH

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin was among the critics, writing a letter to Metropolitan Museum of Art Director and CEO Max Hollein, Costume Institute Curator in Charge Andrew Bolton and Met trustee Anna Wintour to express her “deep concern” over the planned exhibition.

After the Met announced that the exhibition would not go ahead, Menin said on X that she was pleased with the decision. 

“As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and as the first Jewish speaker of the New York City Council, this decision was personal to me, and the Jewish community and I felt a strong obligation to speak out,” Menin said in a statement. 

The show, “John Galliano: Horizons,” was going to trace Galliano’s career and, according to Vogue, would have been only the third Costume Institute retrospective devoted to a living designer, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Comme des Garcons’ Rei Kawakubo in 2017.

The Met said a new spring Costume Institute exhibition would be announced later along with details about the 2027 Met Gala.

(Reporting by Jenna Zucker; Editing by Howard Goller)