Denise Green

Director of Graduate Studies in Fiber Science & Apparel Design

Denise Green, director of the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection, says the controversy is as much about institutional incentives and the attention economy as it is about Galliano himself.

Green says:

“I don’t see John Galliano as a martyr. His antisemitic and racist remarks were egregious, and nothing about his artistic significance excuses them. But I do think there is a legitimate question about whether he has become a convenient scapegoat for an institutional decision that deserves much more scrutiny. 

“Influential designers, artists, and other cultural figures can have profound moral failures, and museums confront that reality all the time. A curator’s job is to contextualize those histories rigorously, not to act as though exhibiting someone amounts to canonizing them. If that principle applies to Coco Chanel, who was the subject of the Costume Institute’s 2005 exhibition despite her associations with Nazi officials during the occupation of Paris and her attempts to use antisemitic laws to wrest control of Parfums Chanel from the Wertheimer family, it is fair to ask why it could not apply to Galliano.

“Galliano has spent the past fifteen years publicly acknowledging the harm he caused, apologizing for it, and describing accountability as an ongoing responsibility. If the purpose of ‘cancel culture’ is to hold powerful people accountable when they refuse to take responsibility for the harm they cause, then Galliano presents a more complicated case: he has taken responsibility, expressed remorse, and continued to reckon publicly with his actions. At that point, the case for permanent banishment becomes harder to justify.

“The Costume Institute, Anna Wintour, and everyone involved are far too savvy as cultural and media operators for anyone to plausibly suggest that the public reaction came as a surprise. In retrospect, the exhibition risks looking less like a settled curatorial commitment than a highly publicized proposal whose controversy and cancellation generated enormous attention before the Costume Institute announces what comes next. I cannot say that was the intention, but it is entirely fair to ask: what show were you planning all along?”