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Thank goodness art enriches the human experience, regardless of
tragedy!
Freedoms come with a cost: human blood, human toil, or US denominated bank
notes. Remember this Ross, and, the mounting of this show wont be attended by
rabble walking on the grass.
Thank goodness Mayor Michael Bloomberg knows how to turn a buck!
CHRISTO'S WASTE OF MONEY January 4, 2005
The Great T.P.-ing of Central Park has begun.
After a quarter-century, a dream is about to come true for French artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude. (Last names? Sacre-bleu! They're artists â and have French ties, to boot. They have no last names.) The couple and their team began yesterday to install The Gates â 7,500 16-foot orange-yellow fabric panels will line 23 miles of park pathways. Christo has had similar "wrappings" in Kansas City, Paris and Berlin's Reichstag. The exhibit, formally opening on Feb. 12 and ending Feb. 27, will supposedly draw in 500,000 visitors and generate more than $70 million in spending. Christo first came up with the idea way back in 1979. A succession of administrations and park overseers turned him down. Yet, Michael Bloomberg â a Central Park Conservancy member while a private citizen â was quick to approve it after becoming mayor. As artists go, Christo isn't completely clueless. He readily admits that, "Nobody needs The Gates . . . [It's] totally irrational, irresponsible, useless, with no justification, with no reason to exist except we like [it]." Fine. And it's their money: The deep-pocketed Christos are paying the $20 million bill themselves â including a $3 million fee for the use of Central Park. (Funny how the city permits self-described "irrational, irresponsible, useless" art exhibits in the park, but suspends the First Amendment for protestors during political conventions.) Still, the display seems just a little self-indulgent â okay, a lot self-indulgent â given the critical need for resources on the other side of the planet right about now. It's hard not to wonder whether that $20 million couldn't be used in a manner that would be "rational, responsible, useful" â i.e., helping the hundreds of thousands around the Indian Ocean basin who have lost everything. Just a thought.
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