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Christo & Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection – Thursday, May 5, 2016

 

The Hyde Collection is pleased to present an exciting, wide-ranging exhibition of works by renowned artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The show, which spans the Museum’s Charles R. Wood Gallery and its newly-renovated Whitney-Renz Gallery,includes 123original drawings, sculptures, collages, and photographs that capture the versatility, longevity, and international scope of the duo’s extensive career. Christo & Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection opens to the public on May 15 and continues through June 26.

As partners in life and work for more than 40 years, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created more than 20 large-scale environmental installations throughout the world, and twice as many that have not been completed due to permissions and regulations. Their monumental outdoor projects include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris, the 24-mile long curtain titled Running Fence in California, Surrounded Islands in Miami,and The Gates in New York City’s Central Park. The latter took 26 years to bring to life. Because the duo’s large-scale public projects are temporary, the preliminary artworks on view in this exhibition remain as evidence of these powerful and visually breathtaking installations. Additionally, they provide an insider’s look at the often decades-long process of taking their art from idea to completion.

The Hyde is thrilled to bring this major exhibition exploring the creative partnership of the world-renowned artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to Glens Falls and the greater Capital Region,” said Erin Coe, Director of The Hyde.”They are best known for their large-scale environmental works that compel entire communities to reexamine the way they view and interact with their own environments. Though their realized projects are temporary, the drawings, collages, and plans for these projects remain and are featured in this first-of-its-kind exhibition.”

Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009, but Christo continues their work. This summer, in Lake Iseo (Italy), Christo will open The Floating Piers, which was conceived with Jeanne-Claude in 1970. The artists never accepted any subsidies, royalties, grants, or sponsorships for their temporary public works of art. All of the artists’ income is derived from the sale of original works of art by Christo to galleries,museums, and private collectors such as Tom Golden.

Started in 1974, the Tom Golden Collection is one of the largest collections of art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the United States.Golden’s personal and professional relationship with the artists began during the 1974 public hearings for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s project Running Fence.After the success of that installation, Golden continued to manage and assist with several of the artists’ large-scale projects such as The Umbrellas and Over the River. This collection represents not only the special relationship between artist and collector, but also the collaborative effort between the artists and the many people involved in producing the works.

Accompanying the exhibition in the Charles R. Wood Gallery, The Hyde will show Running Fence (1977), an Academy Award-nominated documentary that shares the artists’ efforts to build the 24-mile fence, including their struggle with local ranchers, state bureaucrats, and environmentalists,and the unveiling of the final project. Additional films on Christo and Jeanne-Claude and their projects will be on view at the Museum throughout the run of the exhibition.

The members’ opening is on Saturday, May 14, at 2:00 pm. Hyde members are free; non-members are $20. Light refreshments will be served. (RSVP to Cheryl Martin at 518-792-1761 ext. 346.)The exhibition opens to the public on Sunday, May 15.

The exhibition is organized by the Museums of Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, CA, which received the collection in 2001 as a donation by Tom Golden. The exhibition tour is managed by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the following sponsors:

The Adirondack Trust Company
Fenimore Asset Management & FAM Funds
JMZ Architects and Planners, P.C.
Warren County
NYSCA

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THE NATURE THEATER OF CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE

Lecture by Jonathan Fineberg

On May 14 at 3:00 pm in the Helen Froehlich Auditorium,The Hyde Collection will host a lecture entitled The Nature Theater of Christo and Jeanne-Claude by noted professor, author, and Christo expert, Jonathan Fineberg.

The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been making vast, temporary art works in public places for half a century.Their Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California made international headlines in 1976. As Christo embarks on a new project in Lake Iseo, Italy, in June of 2016, their work still forces people to rethink much that takes place in the public sphere and in their own lives.In this lecture, Professor Jonathan Fineberg (above)will examine why the artists’ work continues to have such an enormous impact and what this tells us about why society continues to need great works of art.