Living in Manhattan my entire adult life, I've experienced many amazing and shocking things, as you might imagine. The most horrible was certainly 9/11 and its aftermath. If there was an event that was the most thrilling, The Gates would have to be it. The brief art installation arrived four years after the abominable terrorist attack and at a time when New Yorkers felt angry, despondent and fearful.
For 16 days in 2005—from from February 12 to 28—an installation of 7,500 sheets of saffron-colored industrial-strength fabric hung from saffron-colored steel frames in Central Park. The soft sculpture installed by artists Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, was called The Gates and covered 23 miles of the park's pathways.
Early on and up until The Gates's unveiling, there was resistance to the installation by park purists. They felt the park was beautiful in its natural state and that The Gates would junk up the landscape. New York's Michael Bloomberg disagreed shortly after his election to mayor in 2002. A wealthy art collector, he understood what Christo and Jeanne-Claude were attempting to do—change the city's mood in the park, touch people who experienced them and create a temporary, quizzical experience.
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I was at the opening ceremony with my wife and teenage daughter on Saturday, February 12, 2005, a bitterly cold morning that also happened to be my wife's birthday. At 10 a.m., I believe, all of the fabric was released simultaneously by teams of workers, and the cloth immediately began snapping in the wind. For the next 16 days, I visited the park daily. At one point, it snowed. Under bleak, fluorescent-gray skies, the landscape was a bright white, with the saffron material appearing like hot coals. Each flap cleared my head by about two feet, and the experience of walking underneath or seeing the sun through the fabric was exhilarating. The park had come alive in a synthetic, organic way.
Many of the people who had doubts strolled the park and realized they were wrong and knew what the installation was all about. They could feel it. The fabric had changed their mood and the park's personality. Park paths seemed to proudly beckon walkers to take them. Everyone strolling was congenial, in awe and impressed. Others less familiar with the park finally had an orange guide to lead them through to the other side, since the pathways were now marked.
I was heartbroken when The Gates were removed just weeks later. It was as if something impossibly beautiful had appeared and then disappeared. With The Gates gone, the park returned to its manicured bleak-winter wilderness. Something had been alive and then had died. The Gates were missed terribly.
Today, I'm screening the terrific documentary The Gates, directed by Antonio Ferrera, Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Matthew Prinzing, and released in 2008. You'll at least get a feel for what this dramatic and colorful event was like, when New York had an extraordinary mayor who appreciated large-scale art and knew in his heart that all New Yorkers would be changed by the installation for the better. The city had reached its apex of greatness and began its climb out of the depression that September 11 left behind.
Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 at 74; Christo died in 2020 at 84. Both were born on June 13.
Watch The Gates at TubiTV by going here.
Reminder: Director Carol P. Chamberland's video documentary Legend of Bop City will be available to you only until Sunday night at midnight (ET). Then the video will go back in the can, and you may never see it again.
To access the video, copy this password: JWCPC21bQ
Next, go here and paste it into the box when asked.
If you need the link to reach the page, it's https://vimeo.com/897608425
Enjoy!
