PORTLAND, MAINE.-The Portland Museum of Art presents Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Würth Museum Collection, on view through December 31, 2005. This exhibition is drawn from one of the most comprehensive collections of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work in the world, owned by the Würth Museum in Künzelsau, Germany. Famous for their fabric installations involving urban and rural sites, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created some of the most controversial and compelling public artworks of the 20th century. On either a moderate or monumental scale, they disrupt what we would see every day and offer us instead a paradigmatic artistic experience that can be transcendental or outrageous depending on one’s perspective. This selection of 75 works surveys five decades of work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The exhibition includes early wrapped objects, a Store Front, a scale model of the Wrapped Reichstag, preparatory drawings, collages, and large-scale photographs. Objects on view will provide an overview of monumental completed projects to date, such as Wrapped Coast, Valley Curtain, Running Fence, The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Surrounded Islands, The Umbrellas, Japan-USA, Wrapped Reichstag, Wrapped Trees, and preparatory drawings for The Gates in New York’s Central Park, which comprised 7,516 gates standing 16 feet high and following 23 miles of footpaths within the park.