The Gates

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A section of The Gates between the Great Lawn oval and the 86th Street Transverse (Feb. 13).

The Gates is a site-specific art installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The artists installed 7,503 metal "gates" along 23 miles (37 km) of pathways in Central Park in New York City. From each gate hung a flag-shaped piece of saffron-colored nylon fabric. The exhibit ran from February 12, 2005 through February 27, 2005.

The books and other memorabilia distributed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude refer to the project as The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005 in reference to the time that passed from the artists' initial proposal until they were able to go ahead with it.

The Gates were greeted with mixed reactions. Some people loved them for brightening the bleak winter landscape; others hated them, accusing them of defacing the landscape. Some cyclists saw them as an obstruction which could cause accidents, although cycling is not legal on those paths. They received a great deal of their nationwide fame as a frequent object of ridicule by David Letterman as well as Keith Olbermann, whose apartment was nearby.

1 Construction and cost
2 Installation
3 Opening
4 More photos
5 Inspirations
6 Related links
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Construction and cost

The total materials used according to the artists were 5,390 tons of steel, 315,491 feet (96 km) of vinyl tubing, 99,155 square metres of fabric, and 15,000 sets of brackets and hardware. The gates were assembled in a 25,000 square foot (2,300 m²) Long Island facility, then shipped to Central Park. The textiles were produced in Germany.

As one of the conditions for use of the park space, the bases rested upon, but not attached to, the walkways, so that no holes were drilled and no permanent change was made to the park.

The artists sold pieces of their own artwork, including designs for The Gates, to finance the project.

They offered a cost of $21 million, but have refused to explain the figure. Greg Allen and the New York Times attempted to itemize the costs and could account for about $5-10 million, given reasonable estimates for parts, labor, and costs related to the staffing of the installation.

[edit] Installation

During construction: one of the many metal base parts (Feb. 6)

On January 3, 2005, work began on the installation of the project.

During the week of January 17, the park filled with workers using forklift vehicles to move the rectangular metal plates into position all over Central Park.

There were small signs placed on every walkway in the park with alphanumeric codes which the workers used to place the metal plates onto the designated spots.

By January 27, most of the rectangular metal plates were positioned. Many had small orange plastic markers sticking up a foot or two (around half a meter) from each end, possibly intended to help people find the base plates if they were covered with snow. A major snow storm on January 22 and extreme cold hampered progress.

Hardware used to make the vertical pieces parallel, even when the base plates are not parallel (due to uneven or sloped ground).

As of February 7, many teams of workers, wearing silver grey smocks, moved the vertical parts of the gates, and attached them to the base plates. The documentation describes the color as saffron but many local observers described it as orange.

The attached vertical pieces were about 20 feet (6 m) high, with a crossbar at the top from which the flag pieces were unfurled. The most common width seems to have been 11 feet (3.35 m) although the width varied, depending on the width of the path, from 5 feet 6 inches to 18 feet.

[edit] Opening

The project was officially launched on February 12, 2005, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped the first piece of fabric at 8:30 AM, with Christo and Jean Claude in attendance.

Before unfurling.

The rest of The Gates were opened over the next few hours with large crowds of people watching. Generally, the crews of people who erected the gates were assigned to open them. They walked underneath, and used a hook at the end of a long stick to pull a loop hanging from the crossbar of each gate. That opened the cloth bag containing the "flag" part of the gate. The bag fell to the ground, along with a cardboard tube around which the flag was rolled. The flag part then hung from the crossbar.

By February 13, all of the flags were unfurled.

The project staff remained deployed in the park, patrolling, and replacing damaged gates. One of the gates, near the Shakespeare Garden in front of the Delacorte Theatre, was vandalized and replaced frequently.

After the exhibition closed on February 27, the gates and bases were removed.

[edit] More photos

Note: each caption is a direct link to the full size image.

Taken on February 18, 2005 from the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

From the roof of the Met.

The following high resolution photos were taken on February 23, 2005 near the North end of the Great Lawn:

Facing west toward Spector Playground	Facing southwest	At the Seneca Village site	Facing Northeast
Facing east

[edit] Inspirations

The Gates alludes to the tradition of Japanese torii gates, traditionally constructed at the entrance to Shinto shrines. Thousands of vermilion-colored torii line the paths of the Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan. Successful Japanese businessmen traditionally purchased a gate in gratitude to Inari, the god of fertility, rice, and foxes.