THE GATES...opens Saturday, February 12

[foxy]

Whether you think it's great art or not is beside the point. I was in Central Park this week watching the gates being assembled and it looks amazing even without the fabric flowing. Anyone in the NY metro area should try to see it. People are coming from around the world for this once in a life time event.

http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/tg.html

[BgMstr4u]

I can see part of the park from my apartment, and am waiting for it to happen, and to see how people react! It should be beautiful.

[Trixie]

I hope this piece will be well-guarded. I say this because for some reason it reminds me of a project I was involved wit three or so years ago.

A woman I know, a landscape architect, came back from Europe full of enthusiasm and photos of lovely, well-tended, flowery city plazas. Why can't we have such things here? she wondered. She approached the city, and after some time a municipally owned vacant lot near the Emeryville border was found to be turned into a public plaza, in a needy, low-income-industrial neighborhood. Artisans of all sorts were rounded up to volunteer their efforts, and in a period of six months, a vacant lot was transformed into a lovely public plaza. Beautiful plantings, tiled benches... even the waste recepticles were designed by a local artist.

After a few months, most of the plants had been trampled, or stolen. The benches had been covered with grafitti. One of the three trash cans had been run over (which left skid marks across the length of the plaza). And, to add insult to injury, the city of Oakland "forgot" to turn on the irrigation, so anything that was left unvandalized was dead.

 

Those of us involved in the project came up with a new city motto:

 

"Oakland. Ya can't have nuthin' nice."

I hope christo's project fares better.

 

Trix