Christo and
Jeanne-Claude |
BEZALEL
Christo’s Gates Project
To Open In Central Park
by Tim Boxer
 HRISTO
and Jeanne-Claude are in
final preparations for their grand tribute to Central Park. In
February the couple will decorate 23 miles of walkways in the park
with 7,500 frames that look like gates with saffron-colored nylon
panels that will flutter for two weeks in the breeze.
It was inevitable that the world-famed conceptual
artists would set their eyes on a New York installation, having
made a reputation of wrapping buildings around the world,
including the Reichstag in Berlin.
"We purchased 5,000 tons of steel and 145,000
nuts and bolts to make the gates," Christo said at a dinner
of Friends of Bezalel, Israel’s National Academy of Arts and
Design.
"We have an assembly plant in Maspeth,
Queens. We move into Central Park in January." The gates will
open February 12.
Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude were born at
the same hour on June 13, 1935, he in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, as
Christo Javacheff, and she in Casablanca, Morocco, as
Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon of a Jewish mother in a French
military family.
The two were guests of honor at a gala dinner at
the Maritime Hotel in New York, where Theodore Kheel, the
prominent labor lawyer, presented them with the Jerusalem Prize
for Arts and Letters for their creative public artwork.
"In 1970," Kheel said, "they asked
me to help get them permission to install gates in Central Park.
Now 25 years later we finally succeeded. It will be one of the
most magnificent works of art ever displayed – paid for by
Christo and Jeanne-Claude."
Dr. Arnold L. Lehman, Brooklyn Museum
director, presented the Patron of the Arts Award to
philanthropist/art collector Hennelore Schulhof.
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