The Gates was a site-specific work of art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The artists installed 7,503 vinyl "gates" along 23 miles (37 km) of pathways in Central Park in New York City. From each gate hung a panel of deep 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 and encouraging late-night pedestrian traffic in Central Park; others hated them, accusing them of defacing the landscape. Some cyclists saw them as an obstruction which could cause accidents^{[citation needed]}, 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.

Construction and cost [link]

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 trucked to Central Park. The textile was produced and sewn in Germany.

As one of the conditions for use of the park space, the steel bases rested upon, but remained unattached to, the walkways, so that no holes were drilled and no permanent changes were made to the park.

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

They offered a cost of $21 million and the details are published in the Harvard Business School. 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.

Installation [link]

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 steel 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. All had small orange plastic markers sticking up two feet (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 ensure that the vertical pieces were parallel, even when the base plates themselves were not level, due to uneven or sloped ground.

As of February 7, many teams of workers, wearing grey uniforms, 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 fabric pieces were 16 feet (4.877 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.

Opening [link]

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

Before unfurling.

The rest of The Gates were opened subsequently throughout the park and were completed within the next few hours with large crowds of people watching. Generally, the crews of workers 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 fabric panel part of the gate. The bag fell to the ground, along with a cardboard tube around which the fabric was rolled. The fabric part then hung from the horizontal crossbar.

By the afternoon of February 12, all of the panels 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 and the materials were industrially recycled.

Gallery [link]

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

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  Taken on February 23, 2005 near the North end of the Great Lawn, facing west toward Spector Playground

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  Facing southwest

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  At the Seneca Village site

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  Facing east

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  Taken on February 13, 2005, facing northeast.

Inspirations [link]

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 worldly prosperity.

Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kyoto, Japan.

Thousands of torii gates line the paths of the celebrated Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.

References [link]

• Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates: Central Park, New York City, 1979–2005, ISBN 3-8228-4242-7: for pictures of the manufacturing process, early meetings with city officials, pictures of the completed project, design drawings, etc.
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude, ISBN 3-8228-5996-6: for pictures and commentary about earlier projects.
• The HBO Movie The Gates scheduled to air February 26, 2008: https://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/thegates/index.html?ntrack_para1=insidehbo7_text

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Gates

• The Gates on the Christo and Jeanne Claude website
• Central Park's 'Gates' to close, a February 25, 2005 CNN story
• The Gates @ Central Park. A community blog on which anyone may post comments about The Gates via email or mobile phone.
• 'The Gates' Bill. Greg Allen, greg.org, February 13, 2005.
• [1] 8 minute film for download: 'A Walk Through the Gates'
• "Enough About 'Gates' as Art; Let's Talk About That Price Tag." The New York Times, March 5, 2005, investigates the $21 million claim.
• The Gates Photo Gallery
• The Somerville Gates, a parody
• In Pictures: The Gates - Extrageographic Magazine
• Geotagged photograph of The Gates - Panoramio
• Stephen Colbert describes The Gates
• Cave Paintings and Christo's "Gates": Art in Individual Minds and Public Places