Great op/ed in the New York Post entitled Masterpiece today.

February 15, 2005 — TELL a New Yorker that what he’s seeing is a work of art, and you can shut him up instantly. Most Manhattanites hate George W. Bush, but if you told them he was an art installation, they wouldn’t be able to criticize him because, hey, it’s art.

“The Gates” — the $20 million what-the-hell-is-this-thingamabob that’s spread out across Central Park like an endless row of construction cones shutting down two lanes on Interstate 95 — is a perfect example of how you can get the famously argumentative and opinionated leadership class in New York City to march in cultural lockstep.

Anxiety about not being with-it enough continues to be the dominant aspect of the cultural life of New York. Nobody knows that better than Christo and Jeanne-Claude — the brilliantly entrepreneurial snake-oil salesmen who designed “The Gates” and managed after 25 years to foist it (or them) on Central Park for a couple of weeks.

You weren’t going to catch anybody in Central Park making a negative peep about the whole project, lest he or she be considered uncool, uncouth, narrow-minded, philistine, incapable of recognizing innovative art when he saw it.

So what if walking through the park simulated nothing so much as traveling through a car wash without the car?

Keep reading…

Hat tip: Powerline.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here are some pictures.

UPDATE: There’s more on The Gates. Check out this satellite image, via Pundit Guy. And Fark had a Photoshop contest.