Library liaison also helps others discover environmental art

Working with acclaimed environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude may not be the usual Caribbean-resort winter vacation. Nonetheless, Thomas H. Garver, liaison to the Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries, is about to spend two weeks staffing an information center for Christo’s new installation, “The Gates,” in New York’s Central Park.

Actually, the project represents a logical progression for Garver. As a curator and director for art museums around the country, including the Madison Art Center (now the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art) from 1980-87, he has installed Christo/Jeanne-Claude exhibitions in a number of museums.

“I first met Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1971, when I was the director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum in southern California,” Garver says. He subsequently has seen all of their major projects including “Valley Curtain” (1972) in Colorado, “Running Fence” (1976) and “Umbrellas” (1990) in California, “Surrounded Islands” in Florida (1983) and “Wrapped Pont Neuf” (1985) in Paris.

“I like Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work because it makes me think about both art and the environment in new and unexpected ways,” Garver says. “It’s remarkably sensitive to landscape and very elegant, beautiful. It even changes the attitude of people who experience it — it makes them happy and encourages them to drop their defenses, their envelope of isolation from one another.”

Like all Christo/Jeanne-Claude undertakings, “The Gates” is no small feat. The gates — and there will be 7,500 of them — will follow the edges and hang over all 23 miles of footpaths in Central Park. Composed of free-hanging saffron-colored fabric panels, the gates will be suspended from horizontal crossbars about 16 feet high. The fabric will hang approximately 7 feet above the ground. The finished work will vary in width from about 5 feet, 6 inches, to 18 feet, depending on the width of the sidewalk. Workers will space the panels 12 feet apart, so that they will be seen easily from far away through the leafless branches of the trees.

And, like all Christo/Jeanne-Claude installations, “The Gates” will remain up for a limited amount of time, opening Saturday, Feb. 12, and remaining up for just 16 days. After that the work will be disassembled and the materials recycled.

Garver, an art historian by training, says that many observers are fascinated by the massive size and unexpected venue of Christo’s works.

“It isn’t threatening, though, but beautiful and elegant. Christo has described these works in unusual places as ‘creating a gentle disturbance,’ particularly in changing a person’s perception of spaces somehow thought of as belonging to everyone.”

Despite their mission to “disturb,” Garver says that both halves of the couple are approachable.

“Christo is very intense about his work, but not standoffish or high-handed. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but is a wonderful conversationalist and has a very interesting view of his environment,” Garver says. “Jeanne-Claude is sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, witty. She is the business half of the operation. She is intensely loyal to her friends, and amusingly contemptuous of those she does not care for.”

In addition to helping with new works of art, Garver is deeply involved in the preservation of existing work. During the early 1990s he assisted with the preservation of the historic Seth Peterson cottage, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1958, at Mirror Lake. Right now he’s busy with another Wright project: commemorating Wright’s Unitarian Meeting House as a historic landmark.

Garver has served as the liaison to the Friends of the UW–Madison Libraries since 2002. In that capacity he helps manage Friends’ projects, including their popular book sales and lecture programs. Fresh from “The Gates,” he will participate in one such Friends’ lecture, discussing Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work, at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24, in L160 Elvehjem Museum. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information about it, contact the Friends at 265-2505 or friends@library.wisc.edu.