No evidence protesters hung a banner featuring Iran’s supreme leader from Brooklyn Museum

In the video, a large, red banner unfurled from an ornate building in front of a cheering crowd. 

The banner read "Supreme Leader Thanks you American boys and girls!" and featured a picture of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

The video was shared June 22 on Instagram with a caption that said, "Controversial Banner of Iranian Supreme Leader Displayed at Brooklyn Museum." 

The caption continued, claiming that a pro-Palestinian group displayed "a large banner featuring the image of the Iranian Supreme Leader outside the Brooklyn Museum in New York."

A man in the video echoed that claim, saying, "Pro-Palestinian protesters take to the Brooklyn Museum and then they drape the leader of Iran — a big banner — over the museum."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) We also saw it circulating on X.

(Screenshot from Instagram.)

Although protesters recently raised banners at the Brooklyn Museum, an art museum with about 1.5 million works of art in its collection, we found no news reports, photos, videos or other  evidence that this one was ever hoisted there. 

During a May 31 protest, demonstrators displayed the black banner reading, "Free Palestine Divest From Genocide," from the top of the Brooklyn Museum’s facade. Some protesters also entered the building. Within our Lifetime, one of the New York-based groups that called for the protest, said the activists wanted the museum to disclose and divest from any Israel-related investments.

But videos of the protest were manipulated to add the red Khamenei banner. 

Videos and photos of the protest posted online do not show the red banner and news reports make no mention of it. 

A CBS New York news report, for example, said protesters had scaled the building and displayed the black "Free Palestine" banner, but didn’t mention the red Khamenei banner. 

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We contacted the Brooklyn Museum and received no response before publication. Just after the protest occurred, a museum spokesperson told news organizations that displaying banners inside or affixed to the building violated the museum’s policy and security protocol. 

Ghoncheh Habibiazad, a journalist with BBC Monitoring, which reports on mass media worldwide, said on X that the video with the Khamenei banner was digitally altered. 

"The original video was filmed in May by a photographer at a pro-Palestinian protest," she wrote in a June 22 post. "The Khamenei banner doesn’t exist in the real video." 

This video of a banner of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei hanging from New York's Brooklyn Museum is digitally altered.

The original video was filmed in May by a photographer at a pro-Palestinian protest. The Khamenei banner doesn't exist in the real video. pic.twitter.com/xhbtbrqL92

— Ghoncheh Habibiazad | غنچه (@GhonchehAzad) June 22, 2024

Tal Hagin, a research fellow with FakeReporter, an Israeli group that reports on online disinformation, also fact-checked an X post that claimed protesters displayed the red Khamenei banner at the Brooklyn Museum. 

We rate claims that a video shows a banner with the Iranian supreme leader flying at Brooklyn Museum False.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.