It’s official: John Galliano has been selected for a career-spanning exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2027.
The move to give Galliano’s work a coveted spotlight in the Met’s Costume Institute — an exhibition that serves as the centerpiece for the annual Met Gala, one of the world’s most watched and obsessed-over red carpet events —makes him the third living designer to receive a solo exhibition at the Met. The honor was previously bestowed upon Yves Saint Laurent (in 1983) and Rei Kawakubo (in 2017).
That means his entire career, from runway highs to antisemitic lows, will fall into focus at the Met. It will cover the start at his namesake label before he segued to culture-shifting work at Givenchy and later, Dior, where he led the famed house for nearly 15 years as creative director from October 1996 through March 2011. More recently, he has led Maison Margiela from 2014 through 2024.
And it will not shy away from his firing by Dior when video footage surfaced showing an inebriated Galliano making antisemitic remarks in a Paris café. The tirade not only led to a professional downfall and a retreat from public life for approximately two years, Galliano was found guilty by a Paris court of public insults based on religion, race, and ethnicity. He received a fine and was forced to pay damages and court fees. Galliano’s retreat, well-detailed in reports, interviews and a documentary, included meeting with Jewish leaders, rabbis and receiving blessings from groups like the Anti-Defamation League.
Per today’s news — as detailed in a press release and an exclusive report from The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman —the Met’s exhibition is not meant to present “a conventional narrative of disgrace and redemption” but rather “how aesthetic achievement, ethical accountability and institutional recognition intersect.” In addition to his accountability for the drunken tirade, Galliano has also said recovery has been key to this new chapter of his life after alcoholism and drug addiction caused turmoil in the previous era.
“John Galliano has exerted a profound influence on fashion over the past four decades,” offered Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French director and CEO, in a statement. “His work brings historical inquiry, artistic imagination, theatrical expression and technical experimentation into dynamic relation. Drawing upon the depth of The Costume Institute’s scholarship and the breadth of The Met’s collections, ‘John Galliano: Horizons’ will offer an expansive examination of his creative practice while attending closely to the historical, cultural and ethical circumstances through which his work is understood.”
Per NYT‘s Friedman, the decision did not come easily or expeditiously. She reports that Galliano, Met Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton, Vogue global editorial director Anna Wintour (a longtime Galliano champion), and a “handful of influential rabbis and Jewish leaders in New York City” met for a closed-door meeting in May to discuss the possibility of a Galliano exhibit. Friedman reported that it was “one of several such meetings” held with Jewish leaders over the past year.
According to a press release, Galliano’s exhibit will be divided into three sections, “Bearings,” “Horizons” and “Atlas of Transformation.” It will be accompanied by a catalog penned by Bolton, published by The Met and distributed internationally by Yale University Press.
“Every Galliano collection begins as a journey among things separated by time, place, or medium: portrait and posture, silhouette and story, memory and material,” per Bolton in a press release. “‘Horizons’ approaches fashion as a form of cartography, mapping not territories but affinities, tensions, and transformations. It traces how images become ideas, ideas become material, and material becomes emotion. Yet a horizon reveals not only what lies before us, but also where we stand. The exhibition therefore considers both how Galliano has remapped the world through fashion and how his conduct, its consequences, and changing cultural values have reshaped our understanding of his work.”
Galliano is now designing for Zara under a two-year deal to “re-author the brand’s archive” by “deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations.” His first collection is expected in September.
Galliano poses with models at his Christian Dior haute couture show in Paris on July 6, 2009.
(Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Galliano and Charlize Theron at the Met Gala at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2006.
(Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)