Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Remembering the Running Fence

The dynamic partnership of Christo and Jeanne-Claude spans more than four decades, and their enormous outdoor art installations are known the world over. From 1972 to 1976, Christo and Jeanne-Claude conceived, planned, and created the Running Fence, an eighteen-foot-high white nylon fence that stretched more than twenty-four miles across privately owned lands in Marin and Sonoma counties in northern California. Four years in the planning, the Fence was on view for just two weeks, but it remains a landmark event in contemporary art.

Remembering the Running Fence revisits the ephemeral splendor of this remarkable outdoor installation with selections from the complete archive, including documentary photography and preparatory artworks. Essays by Smithsonian secretary Wayne Clough, attorney Edwin Anderson, Smithsonian American Art Museum director Elizabeth Broun, and artist and author Brian O'Doherty reflect on the legacy of the Running Fence and the extraordinary legal and logistical odyssey of two artists who, in the name of artistic freedom, dared to dream of and ultimately build a temporary fence that captured imaginations, as well as the light and landscape of northern California.

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