In principle, and as often as possible in practice, it's best to separate judgments about an artist from judgments about the art.

Roald Dahl was an unabashed Jew hater. But my childhood (and millions of others) would have been poorer without Willy Wonka and Matilda Wormwood. Pablo Picasso was monstrous in his treatment of women. He was wondrous in his depiction of them. Eldridge Cleaver was an admitted and convicted rapist. Yet "Soul on Ice" is one of the most interesting books of its time.

Then there's the case of John Galliano, the British fashion designer, and the self-inflicted fiasco that has befallen New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. On Monday, Galliano withdrew under pressure from a planned nine-month retrospective of his work at the museum, to be kicked off next May with the Met's lavish, lucrative, star-studded annual gala.

Galliano, by broad consensus, is a master of his craft whose creative gifts enshrined Givenchy, Dior and Maison Margiela as international fashion powerhouses. He is also, by many accounts, a wretch.

"From his early days as a struggling designer in London and Paris through his time at the heights of the fashion industry, Mr. Galliano was known to be verbally abusive to employees, friends and strangers alike," wrote Dana Thomas, his biographer, in a guest essay in The New York Times. In 2011 a French court convicted him........

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