The exhibit also comes amid a spate of high-profile antisemitic attacks in the US and abroad. “At a time when so many are feeling fearful of antisemitism, it’s going to make people understandably a little discomforted in the American Jewish community,” said Nate Wolfson, the communications director for the Nexus Project, a US non-profit which works to combat antisemitism.
Still, that doesn’t mean everyone has forgiven Galliano. Wolfson said that it’s inevitable Jewish people will have mixed feelings about the show and the designer’s reacceptance into fashion’s upper echelons. “The hope is just that they don’t sanitize it for the sake of ease. And rather really wrestle with it and make sure that it’s front and center, so people understand the disturbing past and attempt at reconciliation and growth,” he said.
Wolfson suggested the exhibit could integrate the video of Galliano’s rant directly, alongside commentary on it. Above all, he said, the focus should be on education: “It’s not just educating that he did something wrong, which of course he did. But educating about the environment that produced that wrongdoing, what can lead someone to believing that?”
