To the Editor:
Re “Designer Quits Met Exhibition After Backlash” (front page, Sept. 1):
John Galliano was caught on video saying he loved Hitler and was accused of hurling antisemitic and anti-Asian abuse at strangers in a Paris bar. That’s not a lapse in judgment — it should permanently complicate how someone is remembered. I understand why the idea of a Metropolitan Museum of Art retrospective caused such a backlash. That reaction wasn’t oversensitivity; it was proportionate.
Still, canceling the Met show doesn’t unspeak the words. It also forfeits the good. The public has lost the chance to stand in a room surrounded by the sheer imagination and craft of a body of work built collection by collection over four decades — and that loss doesn’t make anyone he wronged any less wronged.
And underneath it all is the real question: Can an apology and a decade of accountability even matter after something people find intolerable — or is this the kind of thing a person can never earn his or her way back from? I don’t know the answer.
What I do know is that Mr. Galliano has given the world more beauty than ugliness — genuine, era-defining beauty, the kind that expands what people think is possible to feel in front of clothes. Canceling the show doesn’t erase the ugliness. It only takes away our chance to stand in the same room as the beauty, up close, and decide for ourselves what to do with both.
Waleed Khairzada Cliffside Park, N.J. The writer is a creative director and former fashion executive.
To the Editor:
The Met’s cancellation of its planned John Galliano retrospective is welcome, but it should not end the discussion of how this proposal was approved in the first place.
Mr. Galliano was convicted in France in 2011 after antisemitic and racist abuse and was recorded praising Hitler. Yet the Met planned to give him the extraordinary honor of a major Costume Institute retrospective, with the 2027 Met Gala honoring him scheduled for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Even more troubling, this was no recent proposal. Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, told The Times that he had considered a Galliano exhibition since 2010 and began developing it seriously in 2024 — more than a decade after Mr. Galliano’s conviction. How could the museum have had years to contemplate this history and still conclude that such an honor was appropriate?
As an art historian, I support museums examining difficult artists. But examination is not celebration.
The Met reversed course only after donors, Jewish leaders, public officials and members protested. Its leadership and trustees should explain why it took public outrage to make them reconsider.
Lisa E. Bloom Berkeley, Calif.
To the Editor:
Holding the Met gala celebrating John Galliano on Holocaust Remembrance Day was insensitive and should have been changed. But cancellation of the exhibition was not the only responsible answer.
Mr. Galliano’s antisemitic and racist remarks were indefensible, but they neither erase the significance of his work nor disqualify it from serious cultural examination. A retrospective is not absolution; at its best, it confronts the coexistence of artistic brilliance and human failure.
I find the cancellation intellectually unsatisfying. Mr. Galliano was fired, convicted, publicly apologized, pursued sobriety and education, then worked successfully at Maison Margiela for a decade. If no remorse or changed conduct can permit reconsideration, society is practicing permanent banishment rather than accountability.
Museums preserve art across human history, including works by individuals whose beliefs or conduct we abhor and works produced within societies marked by conquest, enslavement and misogyny. We do not erase them; we contextualize them.
Hicham Oumlil Brooklyn The writer is a fashion designer.
Dark Money in Politics
To the Editor:
Re “Hidden Gusher of Money Is Upending the Midterms” (front page, Sept. 1):
The nexus of money and influence is driving a wedge between the haves and the have-nots to a degree that it has become an existential threat to the fabric of our society.
A republic, which the United States is supposed to be, cannot exist when a large segment of its people is resentful and distrusting of another segment.
The Trump administration has worsened this division more than any foreign party has been able to do.
John A. Viteritti Laurel, N.Y.
The post John Galliano and the Uproar at the Met appeared first on New York Times.
