The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, the organization that stewards the legacy of the iconic artist duo who wrapped large structures in fabric, has donated 14 artworks to two museums in Paris.
The artists’ ties to the city are well documented. In 2021, a year after Christo’s death at 84, the artists’ 1962 plan to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in 25,000 square meters of metallic blue polypropylene fabric and red rope was finally realized after almost 60 years. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who died 2009, also wrapped the Pont-Neuf, a centuries old bridge that crosses the Seine, along with surrounding sidewalks and embankments, in orange-yellow fabric in 1985. (The French street artist JR plans to re-wrap the Pont Neuf this summer in homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude.)
The Musée Carnavalet, dedicated to the history of the city of Paris, will receive a collage related to an unrealized project in which Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposed wrapping several buildings near the Place de la Concorde, among them the Église de la Madeleine and the Hôtel de la Marine, along with three silkscreens and a lithograph depicting the 1961–62 installation The Iron Curtain–Wall of Oil Barrels, Rue Visconti, Paris; the wrapped Arc de Triomphe and Pont Neuf; and Edifice Public Empaqueté, Project (Ecole Militaire, Paris), 1991. The newly acquired works will be on view at the Musée Carnavalet this fall.
The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, meanwhile, will receive seven silkscreens relating to projects in Kassel, Minneapolis, New York City, and Rome; the scale model for Empaquetage 5,600 cubic meters, Documenta IV, Kassel, which involved erecting a 280-foot-tall inflated column in Karlsaue Park during Documenta IV in 1968; and Package on a Luggage Rack (1962), an early standalone sculpture featuring a wrapped object strapped to a metal rack.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 5,600 Cubicmeter Package, documenta IV, Kassel, 1967–68.
Courtesy Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundatin/Photo André Grossmann
Christo, who was born in Bulgaria, met Jeanne-Claude, who was born in Morocco, in Paris in 1958. They lived there until 1964, when the pair moved to New York.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said in a statement that she is “delighted” by the foundation’s gift to the city. “The people of Paris have not forgotten what these two artists gave to their city in 1985 when they wrapped the Pont-Neuf. It was a gesture of radical simplicity, whose brilliance continues to amaze us.”
