Christo and Jeanne-Claude are the long distance runners of public art. Their project, The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York City, conceived in 1979 and denied a permit by the City in 1981, was nonetheless sustained and refined over the years in Christo's drawings and collages while the artists successfully completed their projects for Surrounded Islands (1983), the Pont Neuf Wrapped (1985), Umbrellas (1991), and the Wrapped Reichstag (1995). Finally, on January 22, 2003, The Gates won City approval and will be on view for the world for sixteen days in February 2005. The artists will construct 7,500 vinyl gates, each sixteen feet high with a width varying from six to eighteen feet. The gates will follow the edges of twenty-three miles of footpaths in Central Park and be twelve feet apart. From each horizontal crossbar the artists will suspend a free hanging, saffron-colored, synthetic woven fabric, which will come within approximately seven feet of the ground and will wave with the wind towards the adjacent gate. At the end of the sixteen days, the gates and fabric will be removed, and the materials recycled.

Display of public art in Central Park on such a massive scale raises many issues which have been fought out by the artists and their advocates. The forty-three page permit signed and notarized by the artists and Adrian Benepe, Parks Commissioner, contains substantial protections for the public, Central Park, and the City treasury. It reads more like a contract for the reconstruction of a street or fire house, than a permit for a sixteen-day display of public art.

The artists may not commence the set up for The Gates before January 3, 2005 and must complete the take down by March 15, 2005, a period of less than three months. They must deliver to the Parks Department by August 1, 2004 a detailed final site plan, timetable and load-in/load-out schedule for review and approval. Vehicles and equipment used by the artists must have Parks permits and be fully insured, must enter the park at Fifth Avenue and 102nd Street and exit at 100th Street and Central Park West, and must be escorted by Parks or Central Park Conservancy personnel. Parks must approve all means and methods of construction prior to the work. The artists will provide security services, keep the area free of debris by daily collection, bagging and removal of litter, and restore the area to its original condition. Central Park's vegetation will receive special attention. The artists have agreed that in setting up or taking down The Gates they shall not "cut down, damage, mutilate, replant, or remove any tree, shrub, or flower." To insure compliance, the artists must supply Parks with a performance bond of $1 million and an additional $250,000 to pay for Parks' expenses as they are incurred. Provisions for indemnification of the City, workers compensation and insurance are also part of the permit in a form similar to that usually found in the boiler plate of all City contracts.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, for the privilege of using the Park, agreed to donate to the Parks Department $3 million, one half of which will be turned over to the Central Park Conservancy. Altogether, the realization of The Gates project is estimated to cost $20 million, all of which must be raised by the artists through the sale of Christo's preparatory drawings and collages.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude resolutely refuse to accept sponsorship, subsidies or commercialization of their projects. They have instead, in a novel arrangement for The Gates, assured that all funds earned through the sales of products using their copyrighted images will go to an environmental charity focusing on New York City. On January 23, 2003, the day after they were granted the permit, the artists donated an exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to the Carriage House Center on Global Issues with the restriction that the net proceeds from all sales of products or production of events be used to protect and restore the City's natural environment, and promote public health, education and the arts. Carriage House created a new not-for-profit membership organization called Nurture New York's Nature, Inc., to manage the expenditure of funds generated by the products and events commemorating The Gates.

The 1981 Permit Denial. Christo's initial application to construct The Gates was denied in February 1981 by Parks Commissioner Gordon J. Davis, who issued a 107-page decision. The 1981 version of the project was somewhat larger and differed from the 2005 project in several essential ways. It would have covered 25 miles of path rather than 23; would have had as many as 15,000 gates rather than 7,532 gates, and some of these would have been as wide as 39 feet; and the time from set up to take down was estimated to take six months, more than three months longer than is now planned.

Of greater significance, however, the 1981 project was scheduled for October when it could conceivably have interfered with many other substantial Park uses including the New York City Marathon. The artists have now shifted the project to February, a winter month when Park use is at its lowest, and reduced the set up and take down time by half. The Gates as originally designed would have been made of steel poles sunk into the earth, with the fabric hanging from loops like a shower curtain. The new design uses hollow, five-inch square vinyl poles supported by solid steel footings which will weigh between 613 and 837 pounds and lie flat on the surface of the paths. No holes will be dug. The hollow vinyl poles will slide into a sleeve with a special leveling plate that will permit the poles to stand straight despite the ups and downs of park paths. The fabric will be attached to the vinyl cross bar by a boat rope-type slide that slips into a prepared channel molded into the vinyl cross bar. These changes allow the artists to do much of the assembly work outside the park and shorten the set up/take down time.

As important as the shift from October to February and the changes in the method of supporting the gates were, these changes would not have altered the 1981 permit denial. New York City in 1981 was just emerging from the depths of the fiscal crisis. The Parks Department lost 1,440 employees between 1974 and 1977, a 31 percent reduction of its full time staff, and park conditions everywhere had deteriorated, with Central Park being the prime example. Commissioner Davis wrote in his 1981 report on The Gates that his major challenge on his appointment in January 1978 was "the Park's survival in the face of recurring episodes of physical damage, uncontrolled crowds, uncollected garbage, illegal vendors, rampant commercialization and, at least on weekends, the absence of anything remotely resembling the sense of peace or tranquility which one traditionally associates with a scenic park landscape."

A major reason for the physical decline of Central Park had been the large number of commercial and sponsored events which used the Park and often attracted hundreds of thousands of people. These events had grown from their small beginning of popular happenings such as kite flying during the Lindsay Administration to a huge engine of destructive uses, all without the guidance of accepted policies that could protect the park and other park uses. Parks even lacked a system to schedule events to avoid overlap and conflict. As a result, Davis wrote, Central Park had become an unintended victim of the revived popularity of the park.

The increased popularity coincided with an equally dramatic decline in public capital funds and ordinary maintenance. Between 1975 and 1978 no public funds of any kind were expended on capital rehabilitation or restoration projects in Central Park, and funds for routine maintenance fell to less than $4 million. The Department of Parks was at that time relying on federal job-training funding for a third of its employees. Nonetheless, the total number of Parks employees citywide was still falling in 1980.

New Park Policies. The Parks Department responded to this challenge with tighter permit regulations and new permit granting standards which balanced the various demands for park usage. It placed a moratorium on all free popular music concerts in 1978 to allow the department to reassess its policies with respect to such events. The objective of these efforts, Davis wrote, was "to allow the spontaneity, creativity and sense of freedom of the early Hoving era and avoid the anti-park excesses which became common occurrences after 1974." Following this new policy, the Parks Department in April 1978 denied a renewal permit for the Taste of the Big Apple, an annual food festival that had drawn more than 300,000 people the year before. In denying the permit, Davis reported that restoration of park damage caused by the prior year's festival had not yet been completed.

In 1978 Davis appointed Betsy Barlow Rogers as the first full-time administrator for Central Park in an effort to better manage it. These efforts drew in public support which culminated in the founding of the Central Park Conservancy in 1980.

Christo's application in 1979 triggered a fear in many New Yorkers that an approval would be a step backwards in the stewardship of Central Park. The board of directors of The Fine Arts Federation of New York, a federation of twenty-two art, architecture and planning organizations, voted seven to three against the project. Barry Benepe, the president of the Federation who also happens to be the father of the current Parks Commissioner, signed the letter to Commissioner Davis reporting the Federation's opposition. Benepe wrote that the project would be disruptive to park users and that Central Park "is complete as an art work and needs no embellishment; it needs restoration and care." In his formal letter, Benepe hand wrote a more sympathetic post script: "P.S. I can appreciate the difficulty of this decision. There are compelling arguments on both sides."

The Christo project, although in form a temporary art installation, was also a major event potentially attracting hundreds of thousands of people to the park. It was thus a perfect vehicle for the Parks Department to develop and enunciate the new policies for the protection of the park. In his introduction to the 1981 report denying the permit, Davis began with questions: "Is The Gates, which will be both a work of art and a large scale public event, appropriate and beneficial for the landmark, extraordinarily public 840 acres which comprise Central Park? Will The Gates' effect on the Park be of sufficient benefit to justify the immense quantities of public time, money and effort, as well as the many risks which the project's physical realization will require?" After tracing the history of park use, the lack of clear guidance for permits, and the adverse effects of the increasing numbers of events, he answered that The Gates project was inappropriate because of the scale of construction it required, the crowds it might attract, the time of the year proposed and the precedent it represented for future uses of the park. Commenting that his decision was "made more in sorrow than in anger," Davis wrote that The Gates was in the wrong place, at the wrong time and in the wrong scale.

The New Application. Twenty years later, Christo and Jeanne-Claude formally renewed their application, and this time it was granted. As in 1979, the artists were once again represented by Theodore W. Kheel, the lawyer and labor mediator. On January 22, 2003 Mayor Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe jointly announced the permit approval. The greatly improved conditions of the park, the Parks Department's confidence in its ability to manage such permitted activities, and the Central Park Conservancy's successful fundraising and stewardship of Central Park made the decision possible. Gordon Davis, who had denied the permit in 1981, this time endorsed the project. "The park is gloriously reclaimed," he said. "The project will only highlight its splendor."

Central Park today hosts major events virtually every weekend if the various road races are counted. Temporary art installations, while not common in Central Park, are common throughout the park system. During the past two years Parks granted 25 temporary art permits in sixteen parks which allowed for a total installation of 59 works of art. In March 2004 the Whitney Museum will install art works in Central Park as part of its Biennial, and temporary art is regularly displayed at the Doris Freedman Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street.

The characterization of The Gates as more of an event than an art work, at least for permit purposes, is the most important factor for understanding both its initial denial and its current strict permit. The 1981 denial was a major precedent and policy statement, while the 2003 approval was more a variation on Parks' policies that had evolved since 1981. The permit was announced through a press release without an accompanying report for none was needed.

When the panels of fabric flags unfurl in February 2005 from Christo and Jeanne-Claude's gates, the event will symbolically open a new era of Park management, and close with finality another: the developmental period of Central Park management, begun in 1978 and most famously symbolized by the 1981 denial of The Gates permit.