Christo and Jeanne-Claude at The Hyde

1976's Running Fence introduced the world to a new kind of environmental artist.

Heads-up! A traveling exhibition titled Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection opens today at The Hyde Collection and will run just six weeks, through June 26 - so I recommend you put it on your calendar now.

This event creates many associations for me, most delightfully bringing up the memory of renovations many years ago at the Hyde house that caused it to be fully wrapped in plastic for months on end. I wonder if Hyde administrators remember thinking then, as I did, that it looked just like a Christo project.

It's also always a treat to see work by this curious duo who helped transform our conception of art from insisting on a housed display into a reluctant embrace of environmental installation on a scale beyond most of our imaginations. The fact that they could even conceive of building a curtain across a valley, or skirting eleven islands with pink polypropylene - much less actually doing it - is a testament to human ingenuity and persistence.

Married partners Christo (still alive) and Jeanne-Claude (died in 2009) took seriously the implications of their simultaneous births on June 13, 1935 on two different continents; I share that birthday as well (and add a third continent, though in a different year), so maybe I'm not objective - but I reasonably expect to love this show. Hope you do, too.

Installation view of The Gates,Central Park, New York City 2005

photo by Wolfgang Voltz