Christo and his partner and collaborator Jeanne-Claude (b. 1935, d. 2009) were responsible for some of the most celebrated public art actions of the past fifty years, including “wrapping” the German Reichstag building in 1995 and installing The Gates, 2005, comprised of thousands of saffron-colored fabric panels that wound along twenty-three miles of pathways through New York’s Central Park. Christo began wrapping objects in the late 1950s. The act of wrapping obscures an object, challenging the public’s understanding of its physical form and conceptual meaning. This ambiguity leaves us with important questions about our own impulses when attributing meaning or value to objects: Are we more excited by the mystery? Can this excitement be sustained? In the end, do the contents even matter?

–From the Glenstone Field Guide