Pace Gallery Founder Arne Glimcher Blasts Met Over Planned John Galliano Exhibition

Arne Glimcher, the founder of Pace Gallery and a figure the New York Times described as an "art world titan," has sent a sharply critical email to Metropolitan Museum of Art director Max Hollein and curator David Breslin over the museum's planned John Galliano exhibition (New York Times).

The exhibition, titled "John Galliano: Horizons," was announced by the Met on 31 July 2026 as the Costume Institute's spring 2027 show — the first major museum exhibition devoted to the British designer, whom the Met describes as one of the most inventive and influential designers of the past four decades (Metropolitan Museum of Art). It is scheduled to run from 9 May 2027 to 9 January 2028.

Galliano's career has been one of fashion's most decorated and most turbulent. He built his reputation at Givenchy and then at Christian Dior, where he was creative director from 1996 until 2011, when he was dismissed after a viral video showed him making antisemitic remarks in a Paris café. He later returned to design under his own name and at Maison Margiela, but the episode has never fully receded from public memory.

Glimcher's criticism, first reported by Art News on 29 August 2026, adds a prominent institutional voice to a backlash that has been building since the exhibition was announced (Art News). The New York Times reported the same day that Glimcher's email was sent to Hollein and Breslin, who is involved in the exhibition's organisation.

The fallout may extend to the museum's most high-profile night. Deadline reported on 29 August 2026 that the Met Gala — the annual fundraising dinner whose theme each year mirrors the Costume Institute's exhibition — was weighing a possible date change amid the growing backlash (Deadline). The Gala is traditionally held on the first Monday in May, timed to the exhibition's opening.

Neither the Met nor Glimcher has publicly released the full text of the email. The Met's exhibition page and press materials describe "Horizons" as an examination of Galliano's career across four decades of design.

What gives Glimcher's intervention weight is his standing. Pace Gallery, which he founded in 1960 in Boston before expanding to New York and beyond, is one of the world's largest and most influential commercial galleries. When a dealer of that stature writes directly to a museum director objecting to an exhibition, the art world listens — not because dealers outrank curators, but because Glimcher's letter signals that discomfort with the show reaches well beyond fashion's usual circles of debate.

The Met has not publicly responded to Glimcher's criticism or to the reported Gala date discussions. The exhibition remains scheduled to open in May 2027.