Christo
Artist, New York City
Throughout five decades of collaboration, the husband-and-wife artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created highly celebrated public-art projects across the globe. Their most recent collaborative project, "The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005" is their first to be realized in New York City, their home for forty years.
This temporary installation was unveiled on February 12, 2005 for sixteens days and consisited of 7,500 sixteen-foot-tall saffron-colored gates (from six to eighteen feet wide, following the width of each walkway). Each gate was set up at twelve-foot intervals along twenty-three miles of pedestrian walkways that lace the park. As are all the artists' major temporary projects, "The Gates" is envisioned as an expression of joy and beauty.
