Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates, Central Park, New York

This exhibition documents the evolution of the widely anticipated outdoor work of art The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979–2005, conceived by the husband-and-wife collaborators Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Scheduled for presentation during sixteen days in February 2005, the completed project will consist of more than seven thousand saffron-colored gates set up at twelve-foot intervals along twenty-three miles of pedestrian walkways that lace New York's Central Park. The exhibition traces the development of this project, begun in 1979, through the display of fifty-one preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, sixty-four photographs, and eleven maps and technical diagrams. Also on view are components of one of the actual sixteen-foot-tall gates.

For more than four decades, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have collaborated on such temporary outdoor works as Dockside Packages, Cologne Harbor, 1961; Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Sydney, Australia, 1969; Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970–72; Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972–76; Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Florida, 1980–83; The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975–85; Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971–95; and Wrapped Trees, Riehen-Basel, Switzerland, 1997–98.

The exhibition was made possible by an anonymous donor.

All works in the exhibition are courtesy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.