As stars, celebrities and Anna Wintour walked the Met Gala on Monday night, protesters began gathering in the streets around the museum.
In Central Park, a small group of protesters, accompanied by an ACLU monitor in a blue vest, gathered with paper signs reading “No Met Gala while Bombs Drop in Gaza” and “No Celebration Without Liberation,” interspersed among signs mostly directly with the war in Gaza. Representatives for the group declined to answer questions or say how many protesters they expected.
Another larger group made its way along Fifth Avenue, with many participants waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Gaza! Gauze!” as they clapped their hands and beat drums.
The New York Police Department, trying to create space between the protesters and the event, assembled barricades at various intersections around the area, but around 6:30 p.m., as the glitz and glamor of the red carpet arrivals of the event was in full swing. Police began making arrests just a block away on Madison Avenue, prompting complaints from some of the protesters that police had donned riot gear while arresting people who were gathering peacefully.
Nearby, Mark J. Levy, a 19-year-old student at Yeshiva University, stood on the sidewalk draped in an Israeli flag in counter-protest.
There were, however, people in the area who believed the night should be for the Met Gala and not the protesters on both sides of the war.
Among them was John Jay College of Criminal Justice freshman Cinthia Andrade, who cheered the arrival of singer Karol G as she pondered rumors that a protest might be coming to the area.
“As a student, I feel it’s important to be able to speak up, and I support that,” Ms. Andrade said. “There were demonstrations for Palestine at my school and they were peaceful.”
However, he added, “I feel that a protest here can be dangerous. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. It doesn’t seem like the right place for me. This is a place for celebrities to be seen, and that’s okay, too.”
Closer to the gala itself, a young designer named Batoul al-Rashdan organized an impromptu photo shoot with a model to showcase her clothing designs against the backdrop of the event.
Ms al-Rashdan said she was not worried that the protests would disrupt the event.
“The police are not going to let them get that far,” he said. “We just managed to get on that road.”
The influx of people into the area and the heavy police presence — at least one helicopter could be heard circling the area, and police were still at the corner of East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue even as protesters in the area began to disperse — had commuters going on the sidewalk with protesters and people there for the Met Gala.
Some passers-by along Fifth Avenue were heard to refer to the protests as “anti-Semitic” and “anti-American.”
But like many other protesters, Alice Farley, 73, held her ground on Madison Avenue, holding a sign that read “Ceasefire Now” with an American flag draped over it. Ms Farley, an artist, said she joined protesters earlier in the evening at Hunter College and went north with the group.
“I’ve been protesting since I was 10, but this on another level,” Ms. Farley said of recent campus protests at Columbia University and elsewhere, many of which have resulted in changes or cancellations of commencement ceremonies.
Pointing to the large mix of people in the area, a man wearing a kaffiyeh and riding a Citi Bike stopped at a police barricade on East 82nd Street and shouted, “Stop sending bombs to kill civilians,” to a group of people running to see a look at the celebrities.
“Let’s go, Nicks,” shouted one of the men in the crowd in response. “It’s not funny,” shouted the cyclist.
Later in the evening, around 8:30 p.m., a group of protesters — about a thousand according to an NYPD officer — headed south on Park Avenue, away from the museum, as the sun set. The sign “No Met Gala while bombs fall on Gaza” could be seen attached to a pole towering high above the crowd.
By 10pm, the streets around the Met were relatively quiet, although police barricades remained in place. Kirsten Agresta, a harpist who said she was performing during the evening’s festivities, stood by one on East 86th Street with her instrument, waiting for her ride home.