If you were in New York City twenty years ago, you might remember "The Gates," a temporary art installation by legendary environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude that, for 15 days in February of 2005, bedecked the 23 miles of Central Park's pathways in thousands of billowing saffron-colored gates.
"The Gates" was beautiful. It was strange. It made the familiar landscape of Central Park suddenly new and unfamiliar. It felt like seeing snow for the first time, or waking up to a secret elven holiday that recurs only once a millennium. It was stately and numinous, and people walked through it laughing in wonder.
In transforming public space, Christo and Jeanne-Claude enlisted everyone who moved through that space in their work—"The Gates" was not just the gates, it was our shared experience of "The Gates," and our varied reactions. And as a brief installation not intended to be repeated, "The Gates" was ephemeral by design.
"The work is not only the fabric, the steel poles, and the fence. The art project is right now, here. Everybody here is part of the work. If they want it, if they don’t want it, either way they are a part of the work," Christo said of "The Gates." He added, "I believe very strongly that twentieth century art is not a single, individualistic experience."