The Met's Double Standard on Nudity

A nude model posing among the armor at the Met Museum was arrested last week. Her lawyer couldn’t resist the delicious irony of the museum’s having countless nude statues and paintings on view but declaring the model “lewd.” The model’s name is Kathleen Neill:

Neill has been charged with two crimes: endangering the welfare of a minor and public lewdness, according to her lawyer, Donald Schechter. She was released from police custody Wednesday and is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 22. “She didn’t do anything sexual. She didn’t perform lewdly and she made no reference to her genitalia,” Schechter said in an interview with Culture Monster.

“There are nude sculptures and paintings all over the museum. It’s the height of stupidity accusing a live model of showing the same thing in a house of art.”

The photo shoot was conducted by Brooklyn-based photographer Zach Hyman for an upcoming art show. (Hyman has not been charged with any crimes so far.) “It’s a project I’ve been working on for three months now — it’s the idea that nudity isn’t necessarily perverse or sexual,” he said in a phone interview today. Hyman didn’t have formal permission to photograph in the museum but he said that “people take personal pictures there all the time.”

A museum employee who was passing through the gallery stopped the photo shoot and escorted the pair to the front of the building to wait for police.

Art of Obscenity: A Nude Model is Arrested at the Met (Culture Monster)