Closing the Tab

Now that the (insert Dr. Evil voice) $21 million worth of Gates are being dismantled (they are, aren’t they?), some are questioning the project’s opaque accounting:

One million square feet of nylon fabric. Five thousand tons of steel. Sixty miles of vinyl tubing. Lots of nuts and bolts.

And a $21 million price tag.

Along with the lofty questions posed by “The Gates” (Is it art? What is art? And haven’t we heard enough of this project?), another query has flitted through the minds of some visitors to Central Park in recent weeks. How did the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude manage to spend that much money on their tangerine dream?

To pose the question out loud smacks of ingratitude, particularly given what is widely viewed as the project’s benefit to the city: drawing thousands of foreign tourists and pumping an estimated $254 million into New York’s economy. And the artists have paid for the project entirely on their own, using no public or corporate money, and therefore do not need to justify their expenses. They financed “The Gates” by selling other pieces of their own artwork, which their associates say increased in value over the past year as anticipation for the Central Park project grew.

On the other hand, it is that unique financing system, of relying on the promise of “The Gates” to maximize the profits needed to pay its $21 million bill, that poses the question of how the bill was determined. And while Christo and Jeanne-Claude have freely volunteered the project’s high cost, they steadfastly refuse to explain how they came to that figure.

Despite their reticence, or perhaps because of it, the question has taken root in the usual places. On the Internet, bloggers have calculated the probable prices of extruded vinyl and rip-stop nylon, but have come up millions of dollars short. Journalists have pestered the artists’ representatives to break down the costs, to no avail.

A New York filmmaker who dared to dissect the $21 million figure on his Web site was savaged in an anonymous e-mail message, which included a suspiciously European-sounding putdown: “You ridiculous apprentice of nothing!”

Using New York’s public spaces as a sort of outdoor gallery always increases an artist’s value, but if the Gates accounting is wrong, doesn’t it mean that it’s also possible that they actually made a buttload of money off of the project? Or am I reading this incorrectly?

Bonus Point: That “suspiciously European-souding” commenter’s story.