Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates returns to Central Park via AR

Twenty years after Christo and Jeanne-Claude's monumental public artwork The Gates transformed Central Park, New York celebrates the anniversary with an augmented reality experience and an exhibition at The Shed. The AR experience, developed by Dirt Empire and Pixels Pixels in collaboration with Bloomberg Connects, allows visitors to view a digital reconstruction of the saffron fabric panels along a path near 72nd Street, accessible via smartphone app. It recreates only 5% of the original installation and is available free during daylight hours until March 23, 2025. Concurrently, The Shed hosts a free exhibition curated by Pascal Roulin, running until March 23, 2025, featuring drawings, scale models, and documents tracing the project's long gestation—first conceived in the 1970s but only approved in 2002 and realized in 2005. The show also includes never-before-seen proposals for unrealized New York projects, such as wrapping two Lower Manhattan skyscrapers and the Whitney Museum. The original 2005 installation, which drew over 4 million visitors in two weeks, used 7,503 panels, 5,390 tons of steel, 96 kilometers of vinyl tubing, and 99,155 square meters of fabric made in Germany, costing $21 million and employing 800 workers. It was intended to lift New York's spirit after 9/11. Christo and Jeanne-Claude had adopted New York as their home since 1964.