It was expected that after the dissemination on his Instagram last Monday of the statement in which John Galliano announced his resignation from the anthological exhibition about his work with which the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York intended to inaugurate the next MET Gala in May 2027, accusations of cancellation began to spread, along with inevitable alarms about the pressures from a stigmatized, mysterious, and all-powerful 'Jewish lobby' in the United States.
Even more so, after 'The New York Times' published, three days before Galliano's resignation, an article denouncing the threats from some investors to withdraw their contributions to the Met if 'John Galliano: Horizons' was ultimately carried out, announced at the end of July and celebrated in the media, among others, by the influential and media-savvy Anna Wintour, former editor of Vogue and current global content director of Condé Nast's magazines. "There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this magnitude than John Galliano," she declared, downplaying the anti-Semitic episode in 2010 involving the then creative director of Dior in a bar in Paris. "I love Hitler. People like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your ancestors, would be gassed," he retorted to a couple, statements for which he was convicted in France for a hate crime and which cost him his position at the French fashion house after over 15 years of professional success.
"In recent days, opposition from Jewish leaders in New York and other places has grown against the museum's plan to pay tribute to Galliano. Some donors have contacted Met executives and threatened to withdraw their contributions to the museum if the exhibition proceeds as planned," explained the New York newspaper. It added that Julie Menin, a member of the Democratic Party, president of the New York City Council, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, considered the exhibition as "a mistake (...) Our cultural institutions, especially those funded by the city of New York, have a responsibility to show that hatred and intolerance have consequences," she wrote in a letter also reproduced by the New York Times.
Some art collectors and Met donors like the gallery owner Arne Glimcher or Alice Tisch showed opposition to the decision to organize the exhibition. The former threatened to remove the bequest of his art collection to the museum from his will, and the latter considered it "a designer's image makeover", despite his repeated apologies for those statements (he apologizes again in his statement) and attributing them to the multiple addictions he was suffering from.
Faced with this series of events, the museum decided to backtrack, Galliano accepted it in his statement, and Wintour herself, one of his biggest supporters, had no choice but to rectify through a statement in Vogue: "John's decision to ask the museum to postpone the exhibition dedicated to his work is very brave and reflects the kind of man he is. I believe it is the right decision, and both he and the museum have my full support. His overflowing imagination, fueled by a lifetime of curiosity and research, is on par with his exceptional craftsmanship," she wrote.
However, those who, like Wintour, consider that we are facing a new case that requires separating the author from his work, and therefore speak of cancellation, immediately replicate the clichés of the omnipresent Zionist lobby, as defined by Ilan Pappé. In his latest work, the professor at the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter argues that the creators of Israel, "aware of the inherent injustice of the project, or at least the immoral dimensions of the seemingly noble solution given to the problem of anti-Semitism in Europe," decided to create two powerful lobbies on both sides of the Atlantic to legitimize their state. Two lobbies that decide on any international issue.
And yet, it would seem reasonable to everyone, without resorting to ancestral specters, that someone does not want to finance an institution that glorifies someone who calls for their extermination as a people and asks for someone to finish the job that Hitler left unfinished.