New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, popularly known as the Met, has announced the theme for its Spring 2027 Costume Institute exhibition and the annual Met Gala: controversial British designer John Galliano.
In its announcement on Friday, the Met said the exhibition, titled John Galliano: Horizons, would be the first to “examine the full breadth of his creative output” using “garments, accessories, sketches, toiles, research books, and archival materials” drawing extensively from the Costume Institute’s collection — the largest of its kind in the world.
The exhibition will examine Galliano’s work stretching from his 1984 graduation collection in London through his work with Givenchy and Christian Dior, to his later tenure at Maison Margiela and his critically acclaimed spring/summer 2024 collection.
The show will also look at the darker elements of Galliano’s past, including his struggle with addiction and two incidents of racist and anti-semitic abuse in 2010 and 2011 that landed him in legal trouble and got him fired from Dior.
Marina Kellen French Director and CEO Max Hollein said, “John Galliano has exerted a profound influence on fashion over the past four decades. 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.”
The show will be divided into three sections — Bearings, Horizons and Atlas of Transformation. The first will have a chronological telling of his career and will address his racist and anti-semitic actions. It will also shine light on his fight with addiction and public acknowledgement of his actions.
The second segment will focus on his sources of inspiration — history, geography, art, storytelling and performance — and look at how his work blends many of these sources together.
The last section will trace Galliano’s creative process based on the wealth of material in the Costume Institute’s collection. His research books, sketches and fittings will take centre stage to show how the designer brought his imagination to life.
“[It] 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,” said Andrew Bolton, the curator of the exhibition.
“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,” he said.
Vogue’s Anna Wintour said there was “no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano”. She said he was “a great designer and his career isn’t defined by a moment”, even if it was “something that he will live with for the rest of his life”.
John Galliano: Horizons will run at the Met’s campus on New York’s Fifth Avenue from May 9, 2027 to January 9, 2028.
