Twenty-seven people were taken into police custody in New York City Monday night and were released Tuesday morning, after protesting against the strife in Gaza outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
While bold-face names like Gigi Hadid, Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Dojo Cat and Demi Moore traipsed up the Upper East Side’s marble stairs en route to the Met Gala, hundreds of protesters gathered outside of the Fifth Avenue museum. Many were said to be part of an all-day rally that had descended on Hunter College’s main campus nearly a mile away earlier in the day.
Tuesday morning a New York Police Department spokeswoman said all of the 27 individuals who had been detained after protesting at the Met had been released. Six were issued summonses and have desk appearances.
With student-led pro-Palestinian protests being held on several area campuses including Columbia University, New York University, The New School’s Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, among others, and in some cases having led to arrests, some area museums, hotels and other businesses have stepped up security. Dozens of protesters had been taken into police custody Friday at Parsons School of Design and at NYU. Security screenings at the Met Sunday afternoon and Monday morning seemed to be more methodical with guards checking bags thoroughly and waving visitors through the metal detectors at the entrances slowly. At Monday morning’s media preview of the Costume Institute’s “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” the added safeguard of wanding visitors with a handheld metal detector was taken.
Representatives from the Met, Condé Nast and Vogue did not acknowledge media requests seeking comment about Monday night’s protests. Condé Nast is a corporate sponsor for “Sleeping Beauties” and the Met Gala. Condé Nast’s Anna Wintour, a longtime museum trustee, cochaired the gala.
As it does for each Met Gala, the Met had already lined up substantial police detail in advance of this year’s event. A NYPD spokesperson told WWD last week that “adequate” police detail was planned for the gala, which is the annual fundraiser for the Costume Institute that attracts corporate titans like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Gawkers and fans were kept at bay on the sidewalks in front of the museum with police barricades that had been set up over the weekend. Police barricades had also been set up on area side streets, but video posts on social media showed some protesters detaching the barricades and knocking them over to run past police officials as they headed east toward the Fifth Avenue museum.
Earlier in the day a contracted security guard had told WWD that a protest was expected to start at 6 p.m. Hundreds of the pro-Palestinian supporters marched over from Hunter College after rallying there for hours. During what was an all-day rally for some protesters, some sprayed graffiti on the 107th Infantry War Soldier Monument. As of 3 p.m., the school switched all in-person classes on its main campus to remote learning. Hunter, which is part of the CUNY system, planned to resume in-person classes Tuesday, according to Vince Dimiceli, associate vice president of communications.