John Galliano Pulls Out of 2027 Met Retrospective Amid Backlash Over Past Racist Outbursts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will no longer mount its planned John Galliano retrospective, the designer announced on Instagram on 31 August 2026, pulling the plug on an exhibition that would have anchored the 2027 Met Gala.
The show, titled "John Galliano Horizons," was scheduled to run from 9 May 2027 through 9 January 2028 at The Met Fifth Avenue and would have served as the theme for the annual Met Gala, fashion's most high-profile fundraising event, then set for 3 May. Galliano said the exhibition was best "not to take place at this time" and that he remained accountable for the pain caused by his words, particularly to the Jewish and Asian communities (Variety).
Galliano would have been only the third living fashion designer honoured with a Met retrospective, following Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017. The exhibition was also billed as the first major museum survey of Galliano's full four-decade career (Deadline).
The decision follows weeks of public uproar. The New York Times reported on mounting criticism of the Met for choosing to celebrate a designer with a documented history of racist conduct. The planned exhibition had intended to address what the Met described as the "rupture caused by his antisemitic, racist, and anti-Asian conduct in 2010 and 2011" (Variety).
That conduct led to criminal charges. In February 2011, Galliano berated a French couple with antisemitic and anti-Asian rhetoric in a Paris café. A French court convicted him of a hate crime later that year (The Guardian). He was dismissed from his roles at Christian Dior and his own label in the immediate aftermath.
Pressure had been building inside the institution as well. The New York Times reported that Met trustees pressed Anna Wintour — the Vogue editor who oversees the gala — and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton to distance the event from Galliano by keeping his name out of the dress code (NYT). Two days before Galliano's announcement, The Hollywood Reporter said gala overseers were already weighing a date change away from 3 May (THR).
Met director and CEO Max Hollein said in a statement to WWD that, following "thoughtful discussions" with Galliano, the museum and the designer had together decided not to proceed (WWD).
In his Instagram statement, Galliano thanked those who had supported him through fifteen years of sobriety and recovery from alcoholism and addiction. He said he did not want the debate around him to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the work of the Costume Institute (Variety).
The Met has not yet announced how it will replace the Galliano exhibition. The 2027 Met Gala is now without a theme, and it remains unclear whether the event — historically held on the first Monday in May — will proceed on its originally scheduled date.
