The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and John Galliano have cancelled an exhibition dedicated to the designer after museum donors, Jewish community leaders and local politicians criticised his past antisemitic and racist remarks. The designer was also to be honoured at the Met Gala, the fundraising event for the Costume Institute that traditionally serves as the opening of the spring fashion exhibition. The event has been run by Anna Wintour, global chief content officer of Condé Nast and a Met trustee – and a great supporter of Galliano’s work – since 1999. Only two living designers have been honoured by the Costume Institute in this way. Among the donors opposed to the exhibition is Alice Tisch: the New York Times quotes from a letter sent by Tisch to Max Hollein, the Met’s director and CEO, in which she describes the exhibition as ‘a failure of governance’. In a statement posted on Instagram, Galliano wrote, ‘I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute.’ In 2011, a French court convicted the designer of a hate crime for remarks he made about Jews and Asians in public. The Met has yet to announce a new spring fashion exhibition and theme for the Met Gala next year.
China is boycotting the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, which opens on 5 September, in ‘strong protest’ against the Taiwan Pavilion’s inclusion, the New York Times reports. In August, Taiwan’s pavilion was renamed the ‘NTMoFA Pavilion’, after the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which organised its presentation. But, after accusations of censorship and pressure from Taiwan’s ministry of culture, that decision was reversed. On Thursday, a curator from China’s pavilion described the incorrect designation for ‘China’s Taiwan region’ and ‘allowing political factors to interfere with art’ as ‘unacceptable’. The Chinese embassy in Seoul said the renaming was ‘directly damaging the political foundation of China-South Korea relations’, while South Korea’s foreign ministry said that the country’s support for the ‘One China’ policy – the stance that Taiwan is part of China – has not changed.
The Science Museum in London has ended its 25-year partnership with BP. The Science Museum Group Academy, whose educational programmes were supported by BP, formally ended the partnership after its current contract with the oil and gas giant ended on 31 August. The museum has been criticised for years because of the sponsorship deal. Chris Garrard, co-founder of Culture Unstained, told the Guardian that the ending of the sponsorship marked a ‘seismic shift’. He described it as ‘a partial victory’ as the museum still receives funding from a subsidiary of the Adani Group, an Indian conglomerate with a renewable energy arm that is also one of the world’s biggest coal-mining companies.
A necklace by Van Cleef & Arpels worth more than £3m has been stolen from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna. On the afternoon of 27 August, two suspects bought tickets to the exhibition ‘GLANZSTÜCKE: Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewelry × Masterpieces from the MAK Collection’. Once inside, they smashed a display case and made off with the platinum necklace, which once belonged to Queen Nazli of Egypt and is decorated with more than 650 diamonds. The theft follows several recent heists of jewellery and precious metals from museums, including the theft of crown jewels from the Louvre and of golden bracelets from the Dacian royal collection from Drents Museum in the Netherlands last year.