The Wrapped Baron

Christo and Jeanne-Claude spoke at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Saturday, sort of. In fact they did a Q&A after a screening of Running Fence, a cinéma vérité docu on C&J-C's Running Fence—which American Art recently acquired. Sort of. The fence itself was, of course, ephemeral, existing for only two weeks in 1976, and its component parts belong to the ranchers on whose land the 24-mile fence stretched. What American Art received was an archive of the preparatory drawings and research materials associated with the project.

I'd already seen the film, so I knew that much going in. Although the Q&A was nearly derailed by a guy with one of those lengthy-essays-posed-as-a-question, the couple was every bit as charming as they're famed to be. I didn't know that the couple were friends with Charles Schultz, but that explains Wrapped Snoopy House.

One thing I didn't get: They didn't talk about the archive. At all. The acquisition was never brought up. I think I have an idea of what's coming to the museum, but I haven't seen much of it. The movie, while a really good introduction to the piece from 1972–76 didn't give any indication of the preparatory drawings and so forth that the artists sell to pay for their projects.

Instead, the artists spent some time describing their upcoming project for the Arkansas River in Colorado, Over the River—doing a nice little favor for the Phillips Collection, which is exhibiting C&J-C stuff for that project next month.

Note: I am a former contributor to Eye Level, the American Art Museum blog.