It took two ornithologists, one mammal expert, five engineers, a crew capable of moving 40 tons of marine trash, and permits from just about every government agency in Miami-Dade County for artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to drape 11 Biscayne Bay islands in bright-pink fabric skirts for their 1983 installation “Surrounded Islands.”
Now, “copious amounts” of the 6.5 million square feet of plastic pink fabric will join the permanent collection of the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater told Hyperallergic.
The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation has donated a collection titled Surrounded Islands Documentation Exhibition, comprising the late duo’s 43 preparatory sketches, mock-ups, photographs, fabric, and other documentation, NSU announced today. The institution touts the largest collection of art by the European CoBrA group in America.
“Surrounded Islands,” Clearwater said, was “the spark for South Florida’s entry into the international art world in 1983,” adding that while the project documentation could have landed elsewhere, “it was important that [it] remain in South Florida.”
For two weeks in 1983, the creative collaborators and life partners completely altered the Miami landscape seemingly for no other reason than Christo’s fascination with Floridians’ relationship to the bay. Throughout their lives as artists, the couple’s enormous works — including “Pont Neuf Wrapped” (1975–85) and “Wrapped Roman Wall” (1873–4) — generated outrage and opposition from local communities. However, the couple’s $3.1 million installation “Surrounded Islands” was particularly controversial, sparking protests in the name of environmental concerns for manatees, birds, osprey, and vegetation during two years of planning.
Those reactions were welcomed by Christo. ”Imagine, in one of our court hearings, a Federal judge, usually occupied with grimmer matters, spent four days discussing birds and flowers,” Christo said on the exhibition’s opening day. The project was eventually given the go-ahead by two Florida environmental regulation agencies.
Exhibition material documenting the strenuous production of the couple’s “Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California” (1972–76) and Berlin’s “Wrapped Reichstag” (1995) installations are held at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Reichstag Building Berlin, respectively.
The “Surrounded Islands” archival collection will be exhibited in the museum’s second-floor galleries beginning on February 22, 2025, and will remain on view for a year.
“The aim is to approximate the jolt of seeing this breathing ephemeral project as closely as possible and ignite our audience’s imagination,” Clearwater said.