Facing intense backlash, influential fashion designer John Galliano has withdrawn from a planned exhibition in his honor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After much reflection and discussion with all those involved, Galliano decided it was best for the exhibition not to take place at this time. He expressed profound and enduring gratitude to the museum’s leadership and acknowledged the pain his past words had caused.

Galliano did not want the debate surrounding him to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. He also recognized and respected that an exhibition honoring his work would be painful for some. Galliano’s decision came as a number of donors and political leaders voiced opposition to the nine-month exhibition, scheduled to begin with next year’s Met Gala.

The furor mounted over the museum’s choice to honor Galliano, who was convicted of an antisemitic hate crime by a French court in 2011. He would have been only the third living designer to receive a solo exhibition at the Costume Institute. Given that the Met Gala traditionally opens the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, the plan risked seeming to sanctify Galliano during an event likened to the Super Bowl of glamour.

Galliano’s departure became known on Monday, just as key members of the Met’s board of trustees gathered for a morning meeting to discuss the exhibition’s fate. Museum leadership had also called a Zoom meeting of the board for Monday at 4 p.m. to focus on a discussion of the Costume Institute. On Friday, The New York Times quoted Jewish leaders who spoke out against the planned exhibition, including Arne Glimcher, Julie Menin, and Elisha Wiesel.

The Met, one of 39 arts institutions on city-owned property, receives millions in annual support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, making its decision a political issue. Menin, the speaker of the City Council, sent a letter to Met leadership, becoming the first local politician to oppose the exhibition, calling it a gut punch to the Jewish community. In 2011, a French tribunal ruled Galliano had made hateful remarks about Jews and Asians in two incidents at a bar near his Paris home, and a video showed him saying “I love Hitler” and telling patrons that “your mothers, your forefathers” would all be “gassed.” He was fired from Dior, where he had been creative director for 15 years, when the video surfaced.

In 2014, after rehab and discussions with rabbis and the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, he became creative director of Maison Margiela and was re-embraced by the fashion world. Brad Lander, a Democratic congressional candidate from Brooklyn, criticized the Met’s plan as a bad mistake, saying they should cancel the show and change the Met Gala honoree. Those critics were joined by Alice Tisch, a prominent donor to the museum, who sent an email to Max Hollein as the backlash mounted.