L' Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped

Christo, in close collaboration with the Centre Pompidou and the Centre des monuments nationaux, will create a temporary artwork in Paris entitled l’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Étoile-Charles de Gaulle). The arch will be wrapped in 25,000 square metres of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silvery blue, and 7,000 metres of red rope.

Its realization will coincide with a major exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, from March 18 to June 15, 2020, retracing Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s years in Paris from 1958 to 1964, as well as the story of The Pont-Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, 1975-85. 

The Centre des monuments nationaux, the government institution that manages the Arc de
Triomphe, is pleased about the realization of a project that demonstrates its commitment to contemporary creation and that honors one of the most emblematic monuments in Paris and in France.

L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped will be entirely funded by Christo through the sale of his preparatory studies, drawings and collages of the project as well as scale models, works from the 1950s and 1960s and original lithographs on other subjects. It will receive no public or private funds.
In 1961, three years after they met in Paris, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began creating works of art in public spaces. One of their projects was to wrap a public building. At the time, Christo, who was renting a small room near the Arc de Triomphe, made several studies of a project there, including, in 1962, a photomontage of the Arc de Triomphe wrapped, seen from the Avenue Foch. In the 1970s and 1980s, Christo created a few additional studies. Almost 60 years later, the project will finally be concretized.

Throughout the entire period when the artwork is on display as well as during its preparation, the space beneath the Arc de Triomphe where the holy flagstone lies and where since 1923 the Eternal Flame has burned in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, will be fully maintained. As always, associations, charity workers and volunteers committed to the values of the French Republic will take turns to ensure the continuity of souvenir and memory, and to proceed with daily ceremony of rekindling the flame and of paying homage to the Unknown Soldier with the appropriate solemnity.