"We have created indoor installations inside museums, like the Wrapped Floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968, and not monumental at all by any standards"

Christo describes having created works that diverge from the monumental scale often associated with his and Jeanne-Claude’s outdoor projects. The reference to installations inside museums highlights their flexibility in working with different spatial contexts, emphasizing adaptability over sheer size. The “Wrapped Floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968” functions as a pointed example, this piece transformed an ordinary space rather than overwhelming its environment. By wrapping the floor, Christo and Jeanne-Claude altered perception and engagement, encouraging visitors to reconsider their relationship not just with art objects but with the museum space itself.

The phrase “not monumental at all by any standards” is significant. It challenges expectations that art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude must always be grandiose or physically dominating, as with their well-known public wrappings of buildings, bridges, and landscapes. Instead, it underscores their interest in the purity of gesture, concept, and experience, regardless of scale. The Wrapped Floor, while humble in comparison to their outdoor interventions, demonstrates how the act of wrapping, of intervening in space, can carry conceptual and poetic weight even when not physically large.

Furthermore, creating art “inside museums” engages with the dialogue between contemporary art and institutional critique. By wrapping a floor, the artists disrupt the neutral, ‘white cube’ environment of a museum, making the space itself the artwork and pushing viewers to acknowledge their participation within it. This approach aligns with artistic currents of the 1960s that sought to break down barriers between art and life, and between object and environment. Christo’s insistence that these works are “not monumental at all” calls attention to the transformative potential of simple, direct actions in everyday settings, elevating the ordinary and inviting more personal, intimate forms of interaction.