Naked Lady Model Arrested at Met Museum of Art

August 27th, 2009

By: Ben

So there’s this artist/photographer guy Zach Hyman who was been creating a stir in NYC with a string of naked lady antics. Basically his scene is that he goes to a public place with a hot model and takes pictures as the girl strips naked. Fun, art, cool, whatever. Everybody wins, right? Hyman, who is only 22, gets some love from the papers and blogs, who in turn get some love from readers who are delighted to find a naked lady story right gosh-darn there on the NY Post, and a bunch of people get to see a naked chick. No losers, right?

WRONG. You forgot about the children! And while Hyman’s last models-stripping-art-thing, which took place on the subway, went smoothly, his attempt to set up a similar show in the Arms and Armor Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, did not go so well at all… Pictures ATJ:

His model, Karen Neill, was arrested for public lewdness.

“Everything was going perfect until the very end,” said Hyman. “Then it became a worst-case scenario.”

But not exactly unexpected — since he acknowledges having his lawyer on speed dial and bail money handy whenever he does a shoot.

A security guard called the cops on the duo, because “there were little kids watching the whole thing.” Can’t really blame the guy, I mean I’m sure he would have been fired had he not done that. But for kids to see nudity? Does it really affect them so negatively? Is some 8-year-old going to see the female form and be all, AHHH I’m going into puberty! It’s not my time yet! There are plenty of cultures in which nudity is the norm and the kids seem all right. Like Sweden. They f*cking love nudity over there. Whereas the blog I’m getting the subway story from actually censors the word “nude.” Like n*de. I was like, a what model? A node model? A nyde model? A n4de model? Que ridic.

Apparently, during the subway project, an old man starting shaking violent and a woman started screaming. This time around, though, people were pretty approving:

“I thought it was cool to juxtapose the nude woman with the art in the room,” said Mike Markovich, a tourist from Toronto. “I was surprised by how many people didn’t even notice her.”