three blog posts about the Gates

I'm a blogger living in New Hampshire. Last weekend I traveled to
NYC to see the Gates with three other bloggers, and here are links to
my illustrated posts about the experience:

Entry 1
Entry 2
Entry 3

Enjoy!

--L

================================
Lorianne DiSabato
http://www.hoardedordinaries.com

Snowy Gates, Part Deux

Since my lame attempt at HTML (below) failed, let's try again -- for lots of photos of the Gates from my snowy day in Central Park yesterday, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/qarvin/

 

Snowy Gates

In case you haven’t seen enough pictures of the gates in the snow, I spent the whole afternoon in Central Park with a camera and I’ve posted several<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/qarvin/"> photos on flickr</a>. Enjoy. --Eric Carvin

 

 

Past The Gates Video

Action footage :

http://www.pastthegates.com

Ride the Gates - video via Bike - Cam

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My experience at The Gates

I lived in NY for 25 years, until 1997 when I moved to the San Francisco
Bay Area. I come back from time to time, but having missed California's
Running Fence, I wanted to return for The Gates. Here's the report I sent
to my teen-age son.

When I first saw it, driving by Saturday night in a cab, I wasn't
impressed. I thought I wouldn't like it. It looked industrial, like
someone had installed a factory in a landscape. Then later, when I walked
around at night, I still wasn't crazy about it. But I did realize it made
me look at Central Park differently. I was aware of how the paths snaked
around, and where all the trees were. I did notice lots of people walking
around, which is rare in February, but even rarer on a 20 degree night.

Sunday, I got up and at 8:30 I took a cab up to 100th Street to run with an
old friend. Driving up Central Park West, the orange banners flapping in
the wind seemed bright and cheerful, like pieces of sunshine.Then when I
was standing around waiting for my friend, I got to walk around and under
the gates, and it made me a little happy.They're really solidly engineered,
indestructible, with a pretty light fabric that billows in the wind.
Sometimes I could can stand in a place and see them going off in every
direction. They made a gray/brown park feel a bit summery. That night it
snowed; the next day, against a white background, they still stood out
brightly.

So I decided I liked The Gates as objects and images. But what really made
me like them more was three other unique ingredients.

First, people. The avenues are teeming, with everyone out on the streets
around the park, strolling, gawking, smiling. Lots of people with cameras,
mostly digital. Not just the out-of-towners. Today everyone is a tourist,
posing and snapping away, playing and looking at their pictures.

Second is the fact that it's the free expression of art, it's almost all
volunteer, and its meaning is whatever the participant sees in it. It
doesn't cost the city a penny: the $20 million cost is financed by the sale
of the artist's drawings. In fact it's a big money-maker for the city,
especially the hotels and restaurants, during the slowest month of the
year. Even the cynics were taken aback by a sign at the tables where
T-shirts, posters and post-cards were on sale: "Christo and Jeanne-Claude
will not derive any income from the sale of The Gates Merchandise. Proceeds
will benefit Nurture New York's Nature Inc. and the Arts, Central Park and
other New York City Parks."

Third, the vision. I think how it took Christo and Jeanne-Claude 26 years
to make this happen. They never gave up, they kept changing the plan to
meet objections and satisfy all the different decision-makers. It was their
Moby-Dick, the whale they never stopped looking for, and knew they would
someday meet. In the end, they got lucky: all the chips fell in their
favor. But they made it happen. It's really amazing to me that they were
able to realize their dream, and bring pleasure to so many people. Some of
the people who aim high succeed, and that's inspiring to me as I try in my
own way to change the world.

Felix Kramer http://www.calcars.org

The Gates

I am sorry, but the Gates are just really ugly. Even in the snow they are ugly. The color is all wrong, it just looks like construction. A complete waste of money. A total publicity stunt. Just awful and ugly. I think the only way it would look good would be to set fire to it!!

The Gates suck!
Sincerely,
Jennifer Anderson

An Amazing Experience

I will be uploading my photos from the past three days of visiting NYC and seeing/photographing the Gates all three days, though not as many shots as I might have liked due to camera battery issues, but amongst my shots there are a few I'm proud up - will upload them to Flickr and share links to them here.

Overall a very amazing experience - in no small part due to the thousands, probably millions over the past few weeks, of people visiting them. Even today, amidst the snow and ice the park was full, cameras were everywhere, and business throughout NYC was showing the effects - hotels were full, restaurants packed, vendors in and around the park doing well - the zoo packed, lines around the block for the MoMa, even the Guggenheim in the midst of tearing down an exhibition (so having more then 50% of the museaum closed) was packed.

The gates themselves initially do not seem like much, each, individually is orange - but over time, as the light and wind, and as you walk along and amidst the park and realize that each gate's position was carefully chosen and thought out - each part of the park is different yet beautiful, with vistas and images that reoccur throughout the park, yet differ as well.

If you are lucky, as we were, and get to a section of the park full of gates, but relatively empty of people, you can hear the gates flapping in the wind. When the sun was out and the sky clear, the gates are each slightly transparent, and full of shadows, shadows of other gates, of trees, of park objects, fences, even people at a distance.

The gates themselves are also getting incorporated into the life of the park - from children playing on the stands, leaving behind collections of pine cones or a lost mitten, to dogs marking their territory. They are for this month at least, part of the life of the city - and people came from all over the world to view them.

Shannon Clark
http://searchingforthemoon.blogspot.com

Young Artist Creates "Duplo Gates"

Thought some of you might enjoy this story. A toddler has put together his own version of The Gates using Duplo lego blocks. The installation took 15 minutes, then it was promptly destroyed in a matter of seconds by a seven-year-old critic and his seven-month-old henchman. -ac

The Gates in the Snow

This photo was submitted by Michelle Nevius.

Michelle, who offers private walking tours of Central Park, has posted video clips and photos on her website.

A Spiritually Uplifting Experience

Rebecca Zimmerman reports on her visit to Central Park this weekend. "I had a very spiritually uplifting experience walking through Central Park," she said. "I felt like I was being surrounded by a constantly moving and shifting temple."

"I loved to watch the curtains of the Gates flapping in the wind and the sun reflecting off them."

Christo in Crawford? First Lady wants artist to 'wrap the ranch'

Christo in Crawford? Texas Town in Knots over First Lady's Plan to 'Wrap the Ranch'

First lady Laura Bush was reportedly so taken with "The Gates," the epic project installed in New York's Central Park by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, that she has asked the pair to consider Crawford, TX, as the site of their next installation. The idea: wrap the Bush's 1600 acre ranch in eight miles of camouflage fabric.

http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/02/christo_in_craw.html#more

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On the lighter side...

A somewhat smaller-scale gates project in Somerville, Mass.:

 

http://www.not-rocket-science.com/gates.htm

 

Eric's Pictures

A series of photos from The Gates by Eric Carvin.

Against the trend

After everyone I know went to see The Gates and described their reaction to
me in great detail, I went before work yesterday. In New York, among my
peers (all around 30 and involved in the art world in one way or another) it
is almost de rigueur to hate The Gates. But for me, the idea of The Gates is
what art can be at it's best: public, accessible and universal. After I saw
The Gates, I believe it is all those things.

The piece is successful because it transforms Central Park into an art
object. I like The Gates the most in the deep ancient dark parts of the
Park, where there are no roads, only narrow paths and tall trees. I also
like standing on top of hills and seeing the orange color snake through the
park. I do not like the saffron color though. To me, the saffron is like the
safety orange/yellow of construction sites, a color that is very prominent
in New York City already.





0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

A Bit Underwhelming, but a Spectacle Nonetheless

Mary Burns says that she feels The Gates is "a bit underwhelming." She then thinks about Frederick Law Olmstead, designer of the park, and his goal of achieving "a public space where different types of people can interact."
"in that sense," she concludes, "I think the Christo exhibit really achieve its goal, and it's quite a spectacle."

Delightful!

Here's a resounding yes-vote for your blogger site on Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates, Central Park 1979-2005. My sister-in-law and I wandered the Park yesterday (2-17) for two+ hours, and the installation is delightful! We started at Columbus Circle and walked up along the 6th Ave thru-street (stopping to climb rocks and bridges) to the Carousel, rode the flying horses, went on up to Bethesda Fountain, and returned past the bandshell to CC via the Hecksher ball fields. We decided the central motif was change: changing aspects, changing colors, changing sounds, all ephemeral. There was little sun, but with a glint the curtains turned a bright translucent orange in the gray landscape; sometimes they hung still in a vista of drapes and sometimes they flapped smartly in a breeze. In one place, we seemed to be covered in them; in another (looking back) they suddenly went marching off in different directions. And above all, they create a social context-dozens of people were walking through the Gates, all with cameras, and we were talking to each other and taking each other's picture by the time we got a few yards inside the park. In the rain the day before, one group said, all the puddles reflected the orange of the curtains, so they were walking through mirror-images. For people yet to visit: It is helpful to bring a park map (e.g. Flashmaps).

Gates Fotolog

There's a new Gates fotolog that might interest some of you. It's another collection of Gates photos from people who use fotolog.net to blog their photos. Special thanks to Patrick Kowalczyk for sharing. -ac

Kids in the park

Before work on Wednesday, I met up with a colleague and we walked in
the northern half of the park, entering at 103rd St & Central Park
West, wending our way around to Harlem Meer and the Conservatory
Garden and out on the East Side somewhere near El Museo del Barrio.

It was warm and the sun occasionally peeked out from the overcast
sky. We didn't see too many people around at first, just the odd
jogger or tourist. But then there were kids. Hundreds of them.
Elementary school, middle school, and high school. All over the park.

What a great field trip. Definitely better than gym class.

- Park Visitor

Bravo Christo & Jeanne Claude!

Hello Everyone,

Last Saturday we arrived at the park at 8:30 a.m. just off 72nd street entrance to one of the many informal unfurling ceremonies happening at the same time.  At that moment, le raison d’être became so very clear.  I understood Christo, Jeanne-Claude, their dedication to their art, relentless drive and vision and was quite touched by the culmination of their hard work, a gift to New York.  It didn’t seem to matter anymore that we missed an official unfurling with Bloomberg, media, et al.  

After 911, the war with Afghanistan & Iraq and the election of 2004, why let the media convolute and interpret the meaning of art for me.  Why answer their question when asked what it means-Bravo Jeanne-Claude!  Hearing people talk on that first day of the Gates, it seemed that they meant many things to many people.  For some it meant shedding memories of 911, and others, a diversion from the war and media, but to us, it was all about birth, life and living life again through our newborn son, Nickcho.

For the next two weeks, Christo rules New York.  Let him do for people, what others have promised and have not yet delivered.  Thank you Christo & Jeanne-Claude.

Pamukoff

Jason Block's Photos

Jason Block has published a photo album of Gates photos. Here's a preview:

Gates Events?

Does anyone know of any special Gates-related events or tours of Central
Park? I think I heard there was going to be a walk-through by a group of
Buddhist monks next week, but I don't know the details.

Important: Please Limit Your Photo Uploads

Hi everyone,

It appears that large photos are overloading the email system and preventing people from posting. Because of this, I'm going to have to impose the following rules:

• Post only one photo per email.
  
• The photo must be smaller than 200k.
  
• Don't post another photo until you've seen your last photo posted.
  
• Please cc the-gates @ yahoogroups.com so I can monitor the pace of posts.

Thanks for your cooperation,
andy

Connection Between Gates and Canopies for First Night 78?

Canopies for First Night 78 copyright Hera January 1, 1978
2 canopies 250' long x 10' wide commissioned by First Night
nylon spinnaker cloth procession rehearsal on Boston Common

A couple of months ago I spoke to Christo when he was giving a talk at
Cooper Union. I asked him when he designed the Gates. His answer was
1979. Then I asked if he remembered seeing my "Canopies for First Night
78" at Midnight on the Boston Common January 1, 1978, and if he
remembered asking me questions about how I "made them work." He was
unwilling to answer my questions and hurried away....The truth of the
matter is that he was (to put it tactfully) inspired by seeing the Canopies.

In today's art world, people do not acknowledge sources for their work
as was the tradition in the arts for centuries. I have discussed this
with artists and critics, supporters and friends. The last artist that
they remember giving attribution was De Kooning. At their encouragement,
I am sending images of the source of Christo's piece (the "Canopies for
First Night 78") to appropriate critics.

Christo's Gates are a static take-off from the fluidity of the two 250'
long 10' wide nylon spinnaker cloth Canopies which I designed. This
stasis is predictable when one takes a design which was meant for fluid
movement and makes it stationary. On First Night the Canopies were
carried from two different directions to meet at the Boston Common at
midnight. They were a huge hit. Revelers were so eager to be a part of
the action that they took the Canopies away from the 60 bearers I had
chosen, and carried the Canopies themselves. There were thousands of
people on the Common that night. The Canopies were written up in all the
Boston papers, Time magazine, and by Lucy Lippard in the November 1981
issue of Art in America: "Another outlet is the community festival like
those...by Hera, whose First Night '78 consisted of a canopied sculpture
accompanied by a torchlit procession through the Boston Common on New
Year's Eve..."

In 1982 Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis wrote a 251 page official
refusal to have The Gates based on solid environmental concerns. Our
current political climate admires business and development. In this
atmosphere The Gates are more acceptable. The great part of the appeal
of The Gates lies in the huge publicity effort Bloomberg has carried
out. As we know all too well, people are much more comfortable going
with a name brand.

As a responsible artist who believes in attribution of artistic sources,
I feel it is appropriate for Christo to credit the Canopies for First
Night '78 as the source of his inspiration. Anyone is free to use the
enclosed photo if attribution is given: "The Canopies for First Night
78" copyright Hera 1978... designer/sculptor/procession leader.
Thanks for your interest.

Please feel free to call or e-mail me with any questions you may have.

Hera
145 Cold Brook Road
Bearsville, NY 12409
hera @ netstep.net
(845) 679-4439 vox
(845) 679-4441 fax
http://www.hera-sculpture.com

Andy's Lame QTVR Gates Experiment

Unlike the high-quality QTVR file posted by Hans, I managed to make a really, really bad QTVR panorama while at the Gates. As you'll be able to tell from looking at the file, I didn't use a tripod, so it comes across more like a bad hallucination than a 360 panorama.

For those of you who can't access QTVR files, here's a flat JPG version of it. If it were a good panorama, it would look like a long rectangle rather than a slithering worm. So as you can see, it's problematic to say the least, but I figured I'd share it just for the fun of it.



Note to self - next time Christo is in town, bring a tripod. -ac

Fullscreen QTVR Panorama

Hi,
panoramas.dk now has a fullscreen QTVR
from the Gates

direct link

Hans Nyberg
commercial photographer
hans nyberg fotografi

Virtual Slideshows from The Gates

For those of you who'd like to sit back and watch a slideshow of photos from The Gates, I wanted to share two links with you. The first is a slideshow of photos contributed from our blog. The second is a slideshow of Flickr photos tagged with "thegates". What's the difference between the two? The first collection contains photos posted through this blog, while the second aggregates all photos submitted by hundreds of Flickr members who visited The Gates. So if you'd like to see what your fellow blog users have photographed, go to the first slideshow, while if you prefer a broader collection from the general public, go to the second one. Enjoy! -andy

Nightline on The Gates Fri., February 11th

From Nightline's email newsletter:


THE GATES, CENTRAL PARK

Feb. 11, 2005

You may have heard of the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, but if
not, perhaps you remember the wrapped Reichstag in Germany, the 1,600
yellow umbrellas dotting the California mountainside, or, the islands
off of Miami surrounded with flamingo pink floating fabric. On
Saturday, the artists will finally realize their 19th project: The
Gates, Central Park.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are, if nothing else, unique.
Jeanne-Claude, with her fire orange hair, speaks in tandem with her
husband, often interrupting to finish a thought. Born on the same day
in 1935, they live and work in their five-story studio residence in
lower Manhattan, which also serves as a gallery for the sale of
Christo's preparatory works.

Interested in a small collage of The Gates? $20,000. The largest?
$600,000. But Christo and Jeanne-Claude do not drive around in fancy
cars, wear expensive clothes, nor do they seem to indulge frequently
in many of the expected luxuries money can provide. But they are far
from spendthrifts. If you live in New York, you may have already seen
the beginnings of their current $21 million expenditure: 7,500
saffron-colored rectangular arches, called Gates, are now installed
along 23 miles of Central Park's pathways. And Saturday morning,
fabric panels of the same color will be unfurled from their velcro
cocoons, creating an even greater explosion of color in the midst of
the park's normally subdued February landscape.

The Gates have been for the artists a 26-year pursuit; they first
proposed the project in 1979. At that time, however, Central Park,
like much of New York City, was in a state of disrepair. But New York
is not the only thing that has changed since the artists began
dreaming of The Gates. The Gates, too, have changed, and the artists
have their engineer, Vince Davenport, to thank. He has overseen the
details of their project and made their lofty vision, which he's
called a "logistical nightmare," come to life.

Regardless of whether you enjoy their art or not, you can't deny the
Herculean effort by a cast of literally thousands required to make
this project a reality. The artists enlisted the work of seven
different manufacturers on the East Coast, a fabric company in
Germany, and hired almost 600 workers for the final installation of
The Gates. And, all those strolling through Christo's Gates in Central
Park over the next 16 days ... they, too, will be part of this public
work of art.

"Nightline" has followed the artists and watched the logistics of the
massive project progress over the last nine months. Tonight, we'll
bring you a slice of the artists' lives, as we preview The Gates.

We hope you'll join us.

Courtney King & the "Nightline" Staff
ABC News Washington Bureau

-----------------------------------------------
Steve Rhodes

It can't be a coincindence

I saw The Gates on TV and thought that they had to be inspired by Fushimi
Inari Taisha in Kyoto. I was there this fall and it was one of my best
finds!

An instant classic

Fancying a role as this blog's resident curmudgeon, (Wait -- I'm not
cute enough to be a curmudgeon!) I thought I'd try to elucidate what
bugs me some much about this project.

For one, though his defenders won't see it or at least admit it, there's
a dangerously bloated ego that propels these visions. It is all too self
consciously screaming, "I am an artist and I make great art."

Next, and arising of this same self-consciousness, comes a feeling of
forced myth making. Like someone sitting down trying to write the Great
American Novel. They'll compare this to the Great Wall, Stonehenge, or
other time proven
mythology, but I'm sorry to disappoint you folks, but one can't be
present at
the birth of a classic. It's logistically impossible. I guess it comes
out of the need to be part of a defining event, but it sounds to me like
when Disney puts "Classic" on the cover of a DVD of a movie that was
released last year.

And last, it's so damned ugly! Yes it is. Maybe it will be better with
flags hanging, but these "three mile orange" plastic pillars taking over
the brilliant vistas of the park are like the fast food joints alongside
Stonehenge or the Starbucks they put inside the Forbidden City. Yes,
it's helping me appreciate the park more because I can't wait
for it to be out of here so I can see it aqain!

----------------------------------------

After a very politically charged year in this city, maybe a little Art
for Art's Sake is needed. But I can't forget that our mayor has let this
project take over the entire park, after he denied us the right to
protest there last year.

We love Art for Art's sake!
It's smart for Art's sake,
To part, for Art's sake,
With your heart, for Art's sake,
And your mind, for Art's sake-
Be blind, for Art's sake,
And deaf, for Art's sake,
And dumb, for Art's sake,
Until, for Art's sake,
They kill, for Art's sake,
All the Art for Art's sake!
-from Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock

Another visitor

The Orange Fabric, Up Close and Personal

Some people have been emailing asking for a more detailed description of what the orange fabric looks like up-close. So I decided to scan a swatch of the fabric given to me by one of the volunteers working at the Gates.

The images as displayed above is pretty close to life size; if you click on it to see the full size picture it will be about 50% bigger than the original. If you think the scan quality is bad and it's causing weird reflections on the fabric, that's actually not the case. The fabric is very reflective in natural light, so the alternating patterns of white, orange and black look the same when you look at the real thing, shimmering when you move it. (On the computer screen it reminds me of the black, white and orange candy corn you get around Halloween.) So while the color choice wouldn't have been my personal first choice, the texture and reflective qualities of the fabric is spectacular.... -ac

ps- question for readers: if you were Christo, what color would you have chosen? Please post a comment and let us know.

Pictures I took this morning

Here are some pictures I took this morning of The Gates. It was
pretty crowded today, and hopefully the crowds will thin out later in
the month and I can go back at a more leisurely pace.

Kevin Meyers
http://kevinmeyers.blogspot.com

Videos from Opening Weekend

Hi everyone... Here's a small selection of some of the videos I took during the first weekend of The Gates:

• Crowds shouting bravo to Christo and Jeanne-Claude
  
• The first gate is unfurled
  
• Billowing Gates
  
• Exiting a tunnel towards a row of gates
  
• Walking through the gates, part 1
  
• Walking through the gates, part 2
  
• Unfurling, Part 1
  
• Unfurling, Part 2

Enjoy... -andy

Harvey's Latest Photos

More photos courtesy of Harvey B. Silikovitz, used with permission.

Gapstow Bridge

Blue and Orange Sky

Sheep Meadow

Looking Toward Time Warner Center

Reflections

Influencing the Minds of Men Through Their Imaginations

"A great object of all that is done in a park, of all the art of a park, is to influence the minds of men through their imaginations...."
- Frederick Law Olmstead,Central Park architect

Better While Running

"I thought The Gates were better while running," says this caller. He suggests you view it from a bike and "get some speed" rather than getting stuck within the crowds.

More Bloomberg Audio

Here's some more audio I recorded of Mayor Bloomberg after Saturday's opening ceremony. I recorded it with my iPod, as evident from the following picture:

Note my iPod in the bottom left corner; if you look really close you can see a reflection of my eye, nose and camera in the iPod. -ac

"I Was Slightly Underwhelmed"

Suggests talking to the "the people with the poles and the tennis balls" -- the project's paid volunteers. Dave is with The Crescent School in the Bronx.

"You've Fallen Victim to Art."

"This Is Not My Color,"

says a woman.

Two Italians

are carrying Gates-colored bags.

A Couple With an iPod Shuffle

take a picture with the shuffle and the Gates.

The Christo People Have Tennis Balls

On the ends of long, extendable prods.

Can I make a plug for my blog with pictures of the past few "Gates" days?

Andy

Great idea, your blog. Do you make money off of it?



I took three sets of pictures. They can be found at my blog:

http://calitoves.blogspot.com

Do you mind posting?

This is a magic experience. I am psyched.

Catharina Torok

p.s. All photos on my blog may not be used or copied without my permission.

"A Higher Than Average Number"

of Europeans in Central Park.

"All The Flags Are Radiating Orange."

Andy comments that it seems a little more festive on Sunday than on Saturday's opening; more people, better light.

Email Backup Address

Hi everyone. Blogger is still being very troublesome posting emails in a timely fashion. To get around this, please cc all of your emails to thegates @ yahoogroups.com so we can receive them directly and post them manually if necessary. I've emailed Blogger about the problem; hopefully it will be fixed soon. -ac

Harvey B.Silikovitz Photos

A series of photos courtesy of Harvey B. Silikovitz.

Billowing Sails

Bethesda Fountain

Layers

Unveiled

Orange Waterfall

Looking Down on Harlem Meer

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Here's a pictures of Christo and Jeanne-Claude that I took while walking between the lake and Strawberry Fields. They showed up in a caravan of limos and paparazzi. I managed to squeeze in and take this photo.



I also managed to take two short videos. The first video shows Christo and Jeanne Claude walking from their limo. The second video shows them contemplatiing The Gates from across a lake. Somehow I managed to be standing just a few feet away from them while all of this transipired. -andy

The First Morning

More pics from yesterday morning. -andy

A gate flutters with Central Park West in the background.

Unfurling each gate took most of the morning.

You can see them in every direction.

A view of some of The Gates from across the lake.

The New York skyline in the background.

Row after row of gates.

Yesterday's Unfurling

Some pics from yesterday's unfurling.

Kids wait for The Gates to open.

A few minutes before the unfurling.

The first gates are unfurled.

Mayor Bloomberg chats with the crowd after the unfurling.

-andy

Yes He Does

I don't think that grand size is the point of Christo's art.

I think a primary objective is getting the public to see things
differently when a monument/landscape that has become
an institutional part of society's vision is temporarily
concealed or altered.  I think that's a pretty brilliant idea.  

I know many people who, like you, think this is a crazy
waste of money when there is so much need in the world.  
In some ways, I agree.  However, there is a lot of wealth
in the world that could be redirected and isn't, and unfortunately
probably never will be.  Christo not realizing his vision wouldn't
change that.  To the extent that his art challenges people
to look at the world more closely and maybe differently, I
think its brilliant and deserving of its place.

I hope The Gates is so amazing that you'll get a little bit
converted!

Sarah Van Norden
Health & Human Development Programs
Educational Development Center, Inc.
55 Chapel Street
Newton, Massachusetts  02458-1060
Phone (617) 618-2333

Visiting from Chicago

An elderly couple from Chicago talk about visiting The Gates.