Letter from Steve Hart
Christo – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
To the editor:
That the long article on page 16E of the October 5 Sunday Denver Post on Christo’s “Over the River” project was by a young reporter for the Associated Press and not a Denver Post reporter or columnist was interesting. It was also interesting that the article included discussion of an exhibit to celebrate the project called “Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Over the River, a Work in Progress” to be held at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. It appears that there is more interest outside Colorado in covering six miles of the Arkansas River between Salida and Canon City with fabric than there is in Colorado.
Let me see if I have this correct: a Denver-based AP writer — who wasn’t born at the time of Christo’s 1972 disaster at Rifle Gap — writes about two artists — and I use the word loosely — from New York City who are being celebrated at a museum in the nation’s capital — home to the permit-granting Bureau of Land Management and assorted influential politicians — even before they have received their permit for a project to be located 1,800 miles away in Colorado. Certainly no influence-peddling there!
And apparently Christo doesn’t care whether the people of Colorado see his “work in progress” exhibit before taking it to Washington. We Coloradans must be too unsophisticated artistically and unimportant politically (or don’t contribute enough cash to his “art”!).
At least the AP article had its title correct: “To Christo, getting a permit for the Colorado project is an art.” It certainly is! To construct an engineering project in Colorado without the participation of the locals, producing an environmental impact statement, or getting a state permit is probably the only artistic skill (besides conning the New York art community into funding their “art”) that Christo and Jeanne-Claude really possess. The Denver Post should be ashamed for giving a con job like “Over the River” any media attention at all. Let Christo cover the Bighorn River canyon in Wyoming or the Madison River canyon in Montana and keep him out of Colorado.
If even a dollar of my state tax money or an hour of state employee labor goes into funding or promoting “Over the River,” I will personally begin a recall campaign for the guilty politicians. And, since I am now retired, I have plenty of time on my hands to do just that!
Steve Hart
Lakewood
