Christo in the Park?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Lovers of Central Park are growing alarmed, we gather, by the prospect that there is going to be a revival of a proposal by the artist Christo to mount an installation along its woodland walkways. Christo is the showman who wrapped in cloth such monuments as the Pont Neuf at Paris and the Reichstag at Berlin. The Central Park project would involve erecting a series of “gates” along 23 miles of paths and draping the gates with orange colored cloth. Imagine yourself on a walk through the park and having to duck your way through hundreds of pairs of what might as well be giant orange boxer shorts flapping in the breeze like laundry in the backyard of a blown up version of the Beverly Hillbillies.
The idea had been proposed and shunted aside a number of years ago. But some members of the Central Park Conservancy and others fear it will be revived now that one of Christo’s fans, Michael Bloomberg, has been elected to city hall. Our Benjamin Smith had the details in yesterday’s New York Sun. Opponents fear the mayor’s support might be enough to enable the scheme to go ahead. We can see where some might see a certain amount of charm in Christo’s antics. But Central Park itself is a work of art, says a former parks commissioner, Henry Stern, echoing the park’s creator, Frederick Law Olmsted. So how does the city go about deciding when a commercial artist gets to use 23 miles of its park paths? And should this be determined by the tastes of the Mayor?
The last mayor who had a serious interest in art and who tried to exercise his taste was the Great Giuliani. He sought to withhold city funds from the Brooklyn Museum when it exhibited a portrait of the Virgin Mary that was festooned with pornographic photos and spattered with elephant dung. We all know what panic the mandarins of the art world went into then. There was practically a stampede into federal court. Now instead of wanting the mayor to butt out, the mandarins of the art world are hoping he’ll butt in. All in all, the logic is asserting itself for some sort of “public process” — hearings before the City Council, say — before Christo’s multi-million dollar construction goes forward.
