The focus of this seminar will be the artist Christo and the public art works created with his wife Jeanne-Claude over the course of 60 years. It is largely based on the group leader’s personal experience, together with her husband Mitko, Christo’s and Jeanne-Claude’s consulting engineer. The course also relies on articles, books, and interviews with the Christos. The course will begin with the early lives of Christo and Mitko, including when they each left Bulgaria, how Christo met Jeanne-Claude, and how they later became friends and teammates with Mitko, who helped them create numerous public art works in America, Australia, and Europe from the 1960s to 2021. Major projects in the U.S. included Valley Curtain in Colorado; Running Fence and The Umbrellas in California; Surrounded Islands in Miami; and The Gates in Central Park, New York City. The class will talk about how the projects were conceived and accomplished, and the reactions they elicited, both for and against, by the art world and the public. The course will examine how the artists convinced all those people who had to say “yes,” from Colorado ranchers to Japanese farmers, local councils to the German Parliament, the mayors of Paris and New York City, ecologists and preservationists, and a variety of local residents. It will also explore how projects were financed by the Christos, and their ability to attract and retain the range of expertise and enthusiasm needed to accomplish their projects.