What should we make of a controversial John Galliano Met Gala?

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On Friday, Anna Wintour announced that the subject of the 2027 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute would be "John Galliano: Horizons."

Galliano is a genius designer. If he hadn't been recorded at a Paris cafe in 2011 making hideous and overt antisemitic comments, a Galliano Met Gala would be a no-brainer.

But he was recorded at a Paris cafe in 2011 making hideous and overt antisemitic comments.

That year, a video surfaced of Galliano berating two people at a Paris brasserie called La Perle. "I love Hitler," he was captured saying, in addition to comments about an unseen person's ancestors being "gassed." In France, insulting someone based on race or religion is a crime. Galliano was eventually convicted and ordered to pay a fine of 6,000 euros.

Galliano was fired from his post at Dior in 2011. He was hired as creative director at Maison Margiela in 2014. His Spring/Summer 2024 Haute Couture collection for Margiela was received rapturously by critics and fashion fans. In March 2026, he announced a partnership with Zara. Stevie Nicks wore one of those Zara looks to the most recent Met Gala. One can't really argue that Galliano's career has significantly suffered.

Wintour and the Costume Institute are aware that they're courting controversy. As Vanessa Friedman reported in the New York Times, the head curator of the Costume Institute said, "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." Friedman also reported receiving a text message from Wintour that read in part, "His career isn't defined by a single moment - something he will live with for the rest of his life."

Since his graduation show at London's Central Saint Martins in 1984, Galliano has consistently produced breathtaking collections of clothes that could be as romantic as they were bratty, as virtuosic as they were punk rock. When he took the reins at Givenchy in 1995, he became the first non-French person to head a French couture house. When he took over at Dior a year later, he ushered the label into a sensational new era with bombastic shows that ended with Galliano himself strutting the runway like a rock star.

There's no question that Galliano's designs belong in a museum. Within the quiet, considered halls of a museum, curators can engineer moments of reflection, nudging us to face uncomfortable truths and sit with painful contradictions.

But does he belong at the Met Gala? The Costume Institute shows inside the Met have long been overshadowed by the hoopla outside during its annual gala. On the Met Gala red carpet, even if you manage to ponder the nuances of forgiveness and bigotry, you'll soon be distracted by - "wait, oh my G od, is that Kylie or Kendall?? I think it's Kylie! Kylie! KYLIEEE!! OVER HERE, KYLIE!! Wait, no, that was Kendall."

I'm sure there will be resistance to Wintour's announcement. I'm also fairly certain that Wintour will not budge. She has long been protested and rarely been moved. Once, while Wintour was dining at the Four Seasons in 1996, an animal rights activist plopped a dead raccoon onto her plate. Wintour didn't leave the table. She finished her coffee and carried on wearing fur. She is not easily shaken. I think it's safe to say that a 2027 Galliano Met Gala is a fait accompli.

Condé Nast has played a pivotal role in Galliano's rise and re-rise. Early in his career, Wintour and her then-Vogue colleague André Leon Talley were huge boosters of Galliano's work, connecting him with patrons and resources and cheering him on in person, in interviews and in the pages of Vogue. After Galliano's fall from grace, Wintour, who now serves as Condé Nast's global chief content officer, stood by him. So did Jonathan Newhouse, Condé Nast's chairman of the board, who made it a personal project to get Galliano's career back on track. Condé Nast Films co-produced the 2023 documentary "High & Low: John Galliano." Few designers have the talent of Galliano. Even fewer have the kind of institutional media power behind them that he does.

I watched "High & Low" this weekend. A few things jumped out at me. First, the infamous incident at La Perle was not isolated. There were three different incidents of Galliano saying antisemitic things at the same bar. During one, he also made anti-Asian comments. The incident in which he praised Hitler was just the one that was caught most clearly on camera.

In the documentary, Galliano seemed as surprised as I was to learn this. An off-camera voice repeatedly tells him that there was more than one antisemitic incident. Galliano appears confused, insisting there was only one.

I was also unaware that in 2013 he was spotted in New York wearing an outfit that resembled a hat and coat reminiscent of Hasidic garb and ringlets that evoked the payos (sidecurls) worn by Orthodox Jews.

The film cuts from Galliano in that look to his agent Anne Nelson letting out a big sigh. "I don't know what he was thinking that day," she said. "But that's John."

Was it? Wintour seemed to think otherwise. "I knew that was John's illness, his addiction," she said of the 2011 incident. "And I knew that's not who he is, and I just wanted to help him."

The fact that Galliano was likely blacked out during his antisemitic tirades does complicate things. Anyone who has loved an addict can tell you that deciding whether to forgive them for their behavior while under the influence can be tricky, messy, irrational, deeply painful and deeply personal.

In "High & Low," Naomi Campbell said she never watched the footage of Galliano's antisemitic tirade. "Because I know him," she said. "I didn't need to watch that video."

But I think we do. For those of us who don't know him, I have an idea for the forthcoming exhibition.

In 2012, I saw the group show "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture‚" a survey of LGBTQ art from the 19th century to the 21st. To get from the pre-Stonewall art to the post-Stonewall era, you had to walk through a small room playing continuous loops of Andy Warhol's screen tests. You couldn't skip this room. You had to pass the silent, insistent gazes of Warhol's various superstars. Their big, achy eyes burned a hole into my consciousness.

It was a brilliant curatorial choice. Every museumgoer had to reckon with the 1960s. Art was forever changed by Warhol, and the LGBTQ movement was forever changed by gay liberation. You didn't have to like it, but you had to acknowledge it.

What if at the Galliano Met exhibit, they made a similar move? Put all the pre-2011 work in one wing. Then make the crowd walk into a small room playing a continuous loop of Galliano's tirade. Put it at full volume. Include subtitles.

Offer two doors. Behind one, you'll find the rest of the exhibition. Behind the other, a refund and exit. Let the public decide what they do next.

Shane O'Neill connects the dots between entertainment news, internet fads, celebrity gossip and pop culture ephemera to sketch a portrait of how we live today.