Christo and Jeanne-Claude are a married couple who create environmental installation art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long curtain called Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma counties in California, and most recently The Gates in New York City's Central Park.

Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to make the world a "more beautiful place" or to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo's wrappings as a "revelation through concealment."

At the end of 1970 Christo and Jeanne-Claude began the preparations for the Valley Curtain project. A 400-meter long cloth was stretched across Rifle Gap, a valley in the Rocky Mountains near Rifle, Colorado. The project was complicated due to protests by environmentalists, and with raising the planned budget of $230,000. The project required 14,000 m2 of cloth to be hung on steel cable, fastened with iron bars fixed in concrete on each slope, and 200 tons of concrete had to be carried by hand in buckets up each slope.

The budget increased to $400,000 causing Christo and Jeanne-Claude additional problems with the financing. Finally enough works of art were sold to raise the money and, on October 10, 1971, the orange-coloured curtain was ready for hanging, but was torn to shreds by wind and rock. In August the second attempt to hang the cloth succeeded, but only 28 hours later it had to be taken down because of an approaching storm.