When I heard that artist Jeanne-Claude had died, I went back to the blog post I wrote last year about her visit to American Art with her other half, Christo. Together, as husband and wife and as artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been reinventing the contemporary art landscape for more than fifty years with their installations such as wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris, and of course, Running Fence, their monumental project in Northern California from the 1970s. Christo and Jeanne-Claude had come to the museum to announce that American Art recently acquired the major group of drawings, photos, and documentation from Running Fence that the artists had retained. In April 2010, American Art will feature an exhibition, Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence that revisits the original, groundbreaking exhibition.
During their presentation Jeanne-Claude said, “On planet earth there is no forever….Everything is more or less temporary.” When asked to comment on her fifty-year working relationship with her husband she said, “We’re just beginning.”
I remember the weather was rainy and gloomy and when I left American Art, I stood on the grand steps and watched Christo and Jeanne-Claude walk ahead. Then I did something I probably shouldn’t have done: I aimed my cell phone at them and captured them walking in the rain. Her deep red hair seemed to be the only color on an otherwise dark and gray afternoon.
