Update: I added a gallery of sixteen more photos of The Gates from this past Saturday.
The Gates in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne-Claude will soon be a memory. Disassembly of this massively-scaled work begins later today. Although mere photographs do not come close to doing this project justice, those (and video footage) will be all that we have to remember it by.
This is not a work that an artist can display in a museum because the components of the work, themselves, are rather mundane—a woven saffron canvas suspended from a minimalist saffron three-sided vinyl frame, weighed down by two black steel footings. However, repeating this mundane element over 23 miles of walkways, allowing it to become one with both the beautiful natural environment of Central Park and the vast community of roaming visitors created a spectacular and memorable visual experience.
The freshly-fallen snow made the walkways a bit icy and slushy in places, but the snow allowed these gates to stand out from their environment even more, which made for a great photo op.
If one was lucky enough to spot one of the uniformed monitors, identified by their “The Gates” vests and their tennis-ball-adorned staffs, one could request a free 2.75-inch-square saffron-hued fabric swatch—a simple, but pleasing memento.
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