Fashion · London
The Met Calls Off Its John Galliano Retrospective
'John Galliano: Horizons', the Costume Institute show the 2027 Met Gala was to launch, will not go ahead. The Met and Galliano called it off on 31 August.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will not stage 'John Galliano: Horizons'. On Monday 31 August 2026 Galliano said in an Instagram statement that the exhibition would not go forward, and the Met's director, Max Hollein, confirmed it: 'Following thoughtful discussions with John Galliano, we have together decided not to proceed with the exhibition.'
It was to have been the Costume Institute's spring 2027 exhibition and the centrepiece of the Met Gala on 3 May 2027, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from 9 May 2027 to 9 January 2028. As announced, it would have made Galliano only the third living designer given a solo exhibition at the Met, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons in 2017, and it was to trace his career from his celebrated 1984 Central Saint Martins graduation collection.
John Galliano, 31 August 2026: 'I have decided, with great sadness, that it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time.'
What ended it was the backlash over his past. Galliano was fired from Christian Dior in 2011 after racist and antisemitic remarks he made in 2010 and 2011 became public, and a French court convicted him of a hate crime that year. The Met had said the show would address that conduct directly; instead, it will not open at all.
In his statement Galliano said: '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 for it.' New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin welcomed the decision: 'Museums such as The Met must be held to a high standard of inclusiveness and tolerance, and I am pleased that they have listened to the concerns I have raised and reacted with the right decision.'
The museum said details of 'a new spring Costume Institute exhibition and the 2027 Met Gala will be announced at a later date'. On 6 September the Guardian reported that, for now, the Met Gala remained without a theme.
For London, the loss is the first chapter. The show was to trace his career from the graduation collection he made at Central Saint Martins in 1984, and that story will not now be told at the Met — not, in Galliano's words, 'at this time'.