Protests Outside of the Met Gala Were Actually Very On Theme
The party’s dress code was inspired by a story about a wealthy couple hiding away in their villa as the public falls into turmoil. Hmm.
As you might’ve suspected — between what sounded like voices chanting in the background of red carpet live streams and the delayed celebrity entrances — pro-Palestinian and anti-war protestors marched down Madison Avenue toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday night as the 2024 Met Gala red carpet was well underway. The irony of the event’s dress code, “The Garden of Time,” was on full display — based on the J.G. Ballard story of the same name about a wealthy Count and Countess hiding away in their extravagant home and garden, attempting to turn back time as a crowd approaches their villa. Or, as Lithub puts it, a tale about “the inevitable doom of the aristocracy.”
While Condé Nast averted a Met Gala strike with a last minute union contract, the night was still marked by protests. As the war in Gaza, backed largely by the U.S., has reached nearly seven months, and on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected another ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas and began his latest military operation in Rafah, the most southern point in the Gaza strip, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg and celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner walked the red carpet at a multi-million dollar affair, a clear disparity emerged.
The activist group Within Our Lifetime organized a protest beginning several streets away from the museum. Around 6 p.m. the crowd of hundreds made their way up Madison Ave. and within earshot of the Mark and Carlyle hotels, both locations where celebrities famously get ready for the gala.
As black Mercedes sprinter vans whisked movie stars, singers, and famous directors decked out in designer clothes to the Met, chants for a “ceasefire now” echoed through streets, taxis, and cars honking along. A significant police presence and barricades, as is customary for the Met Gala, were already set up near the hotels to control crowds. The group peeled off Madison Ave. to avoid roadblocks and instead snaked through Central Park. In the park, people stopped to film as the crowd passed by, some joining in calls for a “free, free Palestine” and to “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
When the protestors, some wearing keffiyehs and wielding Palestinian and Irish flags, exited the park onto Fifth Ave., helicopters could be seen and heard overhead. The museum was within sight, but police, some in riot gear, had made a barricade of bike racks and dozens of cops across the street, forcing the crowd to divert back down Fifth. A few pedestrians asked the police if they could get through the barricades and were told they needed to wait. One woman sarcastically told the cops “Yeah, protect the millionaires.”
According to the New York Times and Axios, several protestors were arrested by the NYPD outside of the gala. After making several loops around the museum, protestors reportedly eventually made their way downtown toward the Plaza Hotel and dispersed.
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