The Yad Vashem USA Foundation, responding to the news that fashion designer John Galliano would no longer be the subject of a major exhibition tied to the Met Gala, issued a press release:
The Met deserves no praise for abandoning an exhibition it never should have conceived. It still owes Holocaust survivors, the Jewish community and the public an apology for planning to use the Met Gala to honor a man who said, ‘I love Hitler’ and told people their families would have been gassed, on the evening Yom HaShoah begins.
The Met called John Galliano ‘one of the most inventive and influential designers of the past four decades’ while reducing his antisemitism to ‘derogatory conduct.’ A disclaimer is not accountability.
At a time of rising antisemitism, culture should awaken conscience and build bridges, not use its prestige to rehabilitate someone who praised Hitler. The exhibition is gone, but the Met’s moral failure remains.
Yes, that, exactly.