Jeanne-Claude passed away at age 74

Jeanne-Claude, one half of the famed duo, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, passed away today at the age of 74. Notable works include The Umbrellas, from Japan to the United States, in 1984:

Various draping installation pieces such as the Reichstag in Germany and Surrounding Islands off the coast of Miami:

And then there was the Running Fence, made entirely of fabric, that ran through Sonoma and Marin counties, in California, directly into the coast:

There’s also a great video documenting the controversy that surrounded their efforts to build a fabric fence across various farmlands and properties in the Sonoma and Marin county.

Their most recent work might have had the largest audience to date. It was The Gates, a temporal art installation of over 7,000 gates spanning 23 miles of Central Park.

The Gates was an experience I was fortunate enough to experience while attending New York University in 2005. I remember the hoopla from the surrounding project, the initial unveilings of saffron fabric (in dedication to Jeanne-Claude’s saffron colored hair) from each gate in the park, and the late night sledding through the gates during the first snowfall of the winter. A 21 year endeavor, conceived in 1979, the $21 million project was said to have brought in $254 million in additional revenue from tourists who came from around the world to witness the temporal art installation.

Update: Upcoming installations include Over The River, a 5.9 mile stretch of fabric that is meant to be viewed from below while the movement of the material is affected by the weather, light, and vegetation, and The Mastaba, a massive structure made of 710,000 shiny oil barrels similar to the color of The Gates.

(images via google images and christojeanneclaude.net)