Photo: Patrick McMullan
When the police dragged the screaming and angry Ruth Vered out of her East Hampton gallery at an opening of an exhibit of Stephen Klein’s fashion photography this weekend, everyone assumed it was because she (a) was serving alcohol without a permit and (b) mouthed off to the cops. “She was being belligerent,” Vered’s neighbor, rival-gallery owner Terry Wallace, told the Daily News, rather unkindly. But in reality, her lawyer, Mark Heller, says, something far more sinister was going on. Vered, he says, is the victim of “selective prosecution.” Heller told the Daily News he believed Vered and another gallery, the nearby Walk Tall Gallery, were unfairly targeted. But why? “I’m more of a pictorialist,” officer Joe Blow said when reached for comment. “Everyone thinks Klein is so transgressive, but he’s just totally commercial.”*
*This quote is entirely made up.
East End Gallery Owner Carted Off to Jail [NYDN]
Crowds Chant Free Vered As Police Shut Down Gallery Over Alcohol Dispute [Hamptons.com]
