Smithsonian Museum Exhibits Christo, Jeanne-Claude

The most lyrical and spectacular of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's epic projects was the Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76, a white fabric and steel-pole fence, 24 1/2 miles long and 18 feet high, across the properties of fifty-nine ranchers in Sonoma and Marin Counties north of San Francisco.

The project attracted far wider public involvement than any previous work of art, including eighteen public hearings, three sessions in the Superior Court of California and the first environmental impact report ever done for a work of art. Paid for entirely by the artists, the Running Fence existed for only two weeks.

It survives today as a memory and through the artwork and documentation by the artists—drawings, collages, photographs, film and components. This collection of artwork, including nearly fifty major preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, and documentation was acquired in 2008 from the artists by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The exhibition celebrates this significant acquisition and presents an opportunity to re-assess after thirty years the impact of one of the artists' best-known projects. In addition, the exhibition will introduce the Running Fence to a new generation that has grown up since its creation.

The exhibition will trace Christo and Jeanne-Claude's imaginative process through Christo's early preparatory drawings and collages that preceded the final installation in California, and reveal how imagination and reality coincided by comparing these works with photographs of the completed project.

The picture shows Christo, Running Fence (Project for Sonoma and Marin Counties, California), 1975, pencil, fabric, staples, pastel, charcoal, wax crayon, black and white photograph, technical data, tape on paperboard, 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm) frame: 22 1/4 x 28 1/4 in. (56.5 x 71.8 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. -- www.americanart.si.edu