Yesterday a friend and I got a chance to see the new Christo and Jeanne-Claude exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It's a fantastic collection of photographs, film, and preparatory sketches of their wrapping and landscape alteration projects including famous projects they've done such as the Reichstag, the Umbrellas in Japan and the USA, and the Valley Curtain in Colorado.

I actually thought the most interesting part of the exhibit was the variety of sketches and models that Christo and Jeanne-Claude designed to convince local officials to permit them to carry out their art. The shear scale and public nature of their works require an incredible amount of political savvy and planning to get people on board in order to make the projects a reality. So it's imperative that the artists are able to convince people to get behind the projects―something they haven't always been successful at.

The proposal pieces on display at the AGO are examples of beautifully executed proposals. Most of them consist of shallow transparent plastic cases containing marked maps, large-scale sketches often overlaying photographs of the locations, engineering notations, and samples of fabrics that might be used in the final work. They convincingly combine the tactile quality of the final work with these fabric samples, the technically possibility of achieving the project through the engineering notes, and a vision of the final work through the combination of photographs of the existing scene and sketches of the proposed work.

The production of these boards is artistic in itself, but I think the lessons of their pragmatic purpose are important to keep in mind for web developers and others who sometimes have to convince clients of the value of their ideas. The beauty of these proposal pieces is in their ability to effectively help their audience envision the upcoming work.

The exhibit at the AGO is free once you've paid regular entrance to the museum and if you're a member it's completely free. Definitely worth a few hours of your time. Now, I just need to coordinate a trip to New York in time to see their new Central Park Gates project. Scroll down on that page for lots of preparatory drawings.