After Galliano Firestorm, Met Plans New Costume Institute Exhibition Unlikely to Offend Anyone

Following the cancelation of a controversial exhibition dedicated to fashion designer John Galliano, the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s Costume Institute will move forward with its 2027 Met Gala and an accompanying exhibition in May, this time under a theme that is unlikely to rile up anybody.

The anodyne-sounding replacement show is fittingly about that which seems plain or banal. Titled “extraORDINARY: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” it is about “how designers transform familiar garments, materials, and objects, inviting visitors to see them anew,” per a description.

“From jeans, T-shirts, and puffer coats to paper, plastic, and metal, the exhibition will reveal how the seemingly unremarkable can inspire delight, surprise, and wonder,” that description also notes. “It will also consider how meaning develops through use and care.”

Per the New York Times, the exhibition will feature somewhere between 200 and 230 objects, roughly a third of which will come from the Costume Institute collection. The rest of the show will be composed of loans or donations from fashion brands. Among the offerings will be Calvin Klein jeans worn by the actress Brooke Shields and trompe l’oeil jeans designed by Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta.

Max Hollein, the Met’s director, said in a statement on Thursday that the show “reveals the rich relationship between fashion, art, and everyday experience.”

It’s a decidedly less flashy theme than the one the Costume Institute originally went with. Galliano, the designer whose work was initially set to the be the subject of a monographic exhibition, had gained plenty of accolades in the fashion world for his bold designs before his fall from grace. In 2011 at a Paris cafe, he made antisemitic and anti-Asian comments, which resulted in Dior firing him as artistic director and a French court finding him guilty of antisemitism.

Galliano subsequently apologized and sought counseling, and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton said he and powerful fashion editor Anna Wintour, a Met trustee and longtime Galliano supporter, involved members of the Jewish community in the conception of the exhibition. But for many, the exhibition appeared off-color, especially because the Met Gala next year falls on Yom HaShoah, the day of Holocaust remembrance in Israel.

Behind the scenes, an array of donors expressed discontent, according to reporting by the New York Times. One was reportedly Pace Gallery founder Arne Glimcher, who threatened to rescind a plan to donate artworks upon his death if the Met moved forward with the Galliano show. As the controversy mounted, the museum called off the exhibition.

The Times today labeled the ado a “public relations fiasco for Anna Wintour,” who is largely responsible for making the Met Gala into the high-profile event it is today and who has raised more than $200 million for the Institute as the event’s longtime chair. She had previously stood by the Galliano show, praising the designer as “courageous” in a statement that accompanied the Met’s release about the cancelation of the exhibition.

Wintour was notably not quoted—or even mentioned—in the Met’s release for “extraORDINARY” on Thursday. The Times reported that she “played no role in the selection” of the new theme.

Bolton, the Costume Institute head, spoke publicly for the first time since the Galliano cancelation for that Times article. He said having to put a pin in the show was “disappointing for everyone involved.”

As to the new show, he said, “I wanted an exhibition that I felt had something new to say, and that I felt was relevant to different conversations. I committed myself to this really quickly because it brings up ideas of value and consumption and resourcefulness and makes us question what we overlook and what we discard.”

Though he admitted that canceling the Met Gala and the show alongside it was perhaps “the most sensible thing” to do, he chose to create a new exhibition anyhow.

In a possible sign that the Met was treating this show differently from past Costume Institute affairs, there was no press conference to announce “extraORDINARY,” which will not have a catalog—a departure from past shows mounted by the department.