Unseen Labor and the Running Fence Corporation

Examining a matrix of female leadership and the essential erasure of labor in Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Running Fence: A Project for California, 1972-1976, reveals a complex system of socio-economic and socio-political cultural production. In “The Fence: Total Art Experience” (February 12, 1975), Santa Rosa Press Democrat art critic Peter Golis spoke with Christo as the artist unfolded an assortment of legal documents, engineers’ drawings, photos, and sketches. Christo said, “All this dealing with farmers and government officers, all these human relations, I consider the work of art.” This quote reveals the scope and depth of Running Fence beyond the frame of land art. It also makes plain Jeanne-Claude, CEO of the Running Fence Corporation, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Associate Director, as well as other employees and figures crucial to the Project for California, were overshadowed and ignored by the media, the public, and Christo. By means of incorporation, Chief Executive Officer Jeanne-Claude navigated municipal, state, and environmental systems needed to secure building contracts and construction permits. From construction memoranda to official letterhead, legal contracts, financial ledgers, payroll stubs, and an environmental impact report, this paper will exam material culture associated with the Running Fence Corporation and glean employee oral histories in an effort to foreground lived experiences of Running Fence. As much as the iconic two-week, 24.5 mile installation is significant to the history of art, it is also important when viewed as a snapshot of people, place, and time.