"Everybody who did see 'The Gates' is interested, and everybody who didn't see 'The Gates' is interested," Elizabeth Reed, director of Gallery in the Square, says of her current exhibition of photographs.

	Sam Leinhardt A digital photograph by Sam Leinhardt, a native New Yorker who's lived in Pittsburgh since 1968, captures "The Gates" in New York City's Central Park. His work is on display at Gallery in the Square in Shadyside. Click photo for larger image.

The mammoth public art project by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude that occupied Central Park for two weeks last month had legs, and it continues to generate opinion and interest, locally and internationally.

The criticism that the aesthetic quality of "The Gates" didn't hold up compared with earlier Christo/Jeanne-Claude works doesn't seem to take into account a shift in focus that the artists began developing in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

In a 1995 interview for the Journal of Contemporary Art, Christo said that was when he started to develop the idea for an "inner space, where you walk inside it," rather than view the work from afar. Such a space was already present in the "Umbrellas" project of 1991, presented simultaneously in California and Japan and was incorporated into "The Gates." The inner space also will be a component of the upcoming "Over the River" project in Colorado.

By the participatory measure, "The Gates" was a success, both in terms of the estimated 4 million visitors it attracted and the continuing activity it's spawned.

A spoof on the artwork, dubbed "The Somerville Gates" and launched on the Web shortly after the Central Park opening, collapsed under its own weight when it received 5.5 million hits in one week and the creator, Geoff Hargadon, shut it down.

Reed is showing digital photographs by Sam Leinhardt, a native New Yorker who's lived in Pittsburgh since 1968, when he began teaching in Carnegie Mellon University's business and public policy schools. He left CMU to start a technology company, which he later sold, and now the self-taught photographer "spends much of his time engaging in digital photography and fine art photographic printing."

	Sam Leinhardt Sam Leinhardt composed this stitched panoramic of five separate digital images of "The Gates" project in New York's Central Park. Click photo for larger image.

Leinhardt was in New York on business when he had an hour or so free and decided to visit "The Gates." He'd been shooting Central Park South for years. "I knew the space," he says. "In a way it was like I went to see what they did to my park."

What he found drew him in, and he photographed park vignettes that he'd taken throughout the seasons, some of which are exhibited for comparison, sans "Gates."

When he returned to Pittsburgh and began processing the photos, he writes, "The images at once transported me, made me look even more deeply at the space and helped me gain more insight into what architects call the built environment, realizing that that term includes such artifacts as Central Park and more explicit forms of art like 'The Gates.' "

"Gates" continues through March 26 at 5850 Ellsworth Ave., Shadyside (entry on College). Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For information, call 412-361-3808 or visit www.galleryinthesquare.com.

Mendelson 'Gates'

There are also six color images of "The Gates" by Pittsburgh photographer David Aschkenas down the block at Mendelson Gallery, 5874 Ellsworth, through March 31. Information: 412-361-8664.

Collective memory machine

"The Gates" are also the inspiration for a Collective Memory Project recently launched on the Web by Flickr.Com and The Institute for the Future of the Book, which invites those who saw the artwork to share impressions and images.

The institute was founded in the past year and is located at the University of Southern California and at Columbia University. To check it out, visit www.gatesmemory.org.