An army of volunteers started dismantling The Gates today. the Christo & Jeanne Claude mega-spectacle that installed 7,500 arches with orange-sienna-saffron-whatever curtains hanging in them throughout Central Park. The New York Times has this curiously unsatisfying interview with Jeanne Claude on the imminent dismantling. The details, though, are really cool—the ripstop nylon fabric panels will be shredded and turned into carpet padding, and the aluminum archways themselves are going to be melted down and turned into pop cans.

Apparently people have taken to cutting swatches of fabric from the gates, which Jeanne Claude describes as “annoying,” but not vandalism. She and Christo—who appears only briefly in the article, being chauffered around NY in a Mercedes Maybach like a Somali dictator—are now working on their next project, which will be a suspension of fabric panels across the Arkansas River.

The New York Times > A Last Look at ‘The Gates’
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