[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-108287701.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore announcing John Galliano as the subject of its starry Costume Institute exhibition opening next spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art met with influential rabbis and Jewish leaders to discuss the selection of a figure \u201cas famous for his antisemitic rant in 2011 as he is for his fashion,\u201d according to the New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tAs reported by the Times<\/em>\u2019s chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, the Met convened several meetings between Jewish leaders and Anna Wintour, Vogue<\/em>\u2019s global editorial director and a Met trustee; Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Met\u2019s Costume Institute; and Galliano himself. Among the Jewish leaders were Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, and rabbis from significant synagogues in New York.<\/p>\n \n\tThe acts of diplomacy stemmed from Galliano\u2019s notorious antisemitic diatribe in 2011, which cost him his job as creative director at Dior and has cast a shadow over his work and his legacy ever since. He returned to the fashion world as the creative director of Maison Margiela in 2014, but he remains \u201ca thorny choice for the show at this moment,\u201d as the Times<\/em> described it.<\/p>\n \n\tRabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America who participated in a meeting in May, told the Times<\/em> he was impressed by Galliano\u2019s ongoing reputational-rehabilitation campaign. \u201cThe word I come back to is \u2018sincerity,\u2019\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cHe was open. He looked right at us and spoke in a clear way, not as if he had memorized talking points.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGreenblatt, of the Anti-Defamation League, said, \u201cWe believe John Galliano has genuinely worked through the issues that led to his antisemitic outburst years ago in Paris, and we have long since accepted his apology. His efforts to repair the damage his words caused and to learn from that incident should be applauded.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBolton, the Met curator, said, \u201cI completely understand why the timing might feel particularly difficult now, given the alarming rise of hate, but I do feel it makes the current questions more urgent\u2014not less. For me, the larger question is not whether artistic behavior excuses transgression, but how to hold artistic achievement and ethical accountability together without allowing one to erase the other. And at a moment of heightened division, I feel the museum and myself have a real responsibility to confront these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGalliano would be just the third living fashion designer to have a Met Costume Institute show, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Gar\u00e7ons in 2017. Bolton said the show will open with an \u201corientation gallery\u201d that addresses the issues surrounding Galliano while also attesting to his talent, according to the Times<\/em>. \u201cIt remains to be seen whether that attitude will extend to the broader Met audience and the Galliano show,\u201d Friedman wrote of the show scheduled to open in May 2027. She also noted that currently \u201cthere are plans for it to travel to other museums after the Met\u2014another rare honor\u2014and the leaders of those institutions will undoubtedly be watching the reactions closely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/met-museum-john-galliano-show-jewish-leaders-meetings-1234794224\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-108287701.jpg?w=1024″] Before announcing John Galliano as the subject of its starry Costume Institute exhibition opening next spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art met with influential rabbis and Jewish leaders to discuss the selection of a figure \u201cas famous for his antisemitic rant in 2011 as he is for his fashion,\u201d according to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2076385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2076385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2076385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2076385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2076385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2076385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}