Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized 'Dockside Packages' in Cologne, an early collaborative environmental artwork and their first major public piece together.
In June 1961, Jeanne-Claude and Christo unveiled "Dockside Packages" on the docks of Cologne, Germany, installing large wrapped and stacked industrial materials — including barrels and rolls of paper wrapped in tarpaulin — in a public dockside setting. This installation is widely regarded as the first major public collaborative work credited to both artists jointly, marking the true beginning of their five-decade artistic partnership.
The piece emerged from Christo's earlier solo practice of wrapping small objects, but with Jeanne-Claude's involvement the scale, ambition, and logistical complexity expanded dramatically. She brought organizational acumen, a gift for public relations, and fearless negotiation skills that would become hallmarks of every subsequent project the pair undertook.
Historically, "Dockside Packages" signaled the emergence of a new mode of environmental and public art: temporary, site-specific, monumental in scale, and dependent on the cooperation of civic authorities, landowners, and vast teams of workers. It set the template for the couple's future practice of transforming everyday and industrial landscapes into sites of aesthetic wonder, always for a strictly limited duration before removal, leaving no permanent trace but photographs and documentation. The work is now seen as a foundational moment in the history of land art and public installation art.