Christo & Jean Claude
The Gates was a site-specific work of art by Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff and French artist Jeanne-Claude, known jointly as Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The artists installed 7,503 steel "gates" along 23 miles (37 km) of pathways in Central Park in New York City. From each gate hung a panel of deep saffron-colored nylonfabric. The exhibit ran from February 12 through February 27, 2005.
In the books and other memorabilia distributed by the artists, the project is called The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979–2005, alluding to the time that passed between the artists' initial proposal and its installation.
The Gates was greeted with mixed reactions. Some people loved the work for brightening the bleak winter landscape and encouraging late-night pedestrian traffic in Central Park; others hated it, accusing the artists of defacing the landscape. It was seen as an obstruction to bicyclists, who felt that the gates could cause accidents, although cycling was not legal on those paths. The artists received a great deal of their nationwide fame as a frequent object of ridicule by David Letterman, as well as by Keith Olbermann, whose apartment was nearby.
COLLECTIONS
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) – New York, USA
The Guggenheim Museum – New York, USA
Centre Pompidou – Paris, France
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum – New York, USA
The National Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C., USA
The Tate – London, UK
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) – Los Angeles, USA
The Whitney Museum of American Art – New York, USA
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) – Los Angeles, USA
The Kunsthalle Bern – Bern, Switzerland
The Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago, USA
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) – San Diego, USA
The Smithsonian American Art Museum – Washington, D.C., USA
The Walker Art Center – Minneapolis, USA
The Museum of Fine Arts – Boston, USA
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth – Fort Worth, USA
The Schirn Kunsthalle – Frankfurt, Germany
The National Gallery of Australia – Canberra, Australia
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Private Archive: The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, based in New York
The Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto – Italy