Five years ago this February, the family traveled down to New York to see "The Gates," the latest creation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his life-long love.

The work consisted of 7,503 vinyl gates hung with red-orange nylon curtains and lining 23 miles of snowy pathways through the bare winter trees of Central Park.

As we rode the train down to the city, I thought about the question people have always raised about the couple's work: Is it really "art?" (Whatever that means.)

When we got there, it was a crisp, sunny day, and the park was filled with people, all strolling along beneath the gates. As for the gates themselves, they were both strangely beautiful and surprising, almost startling in their friendly audacity. Their visual warmth seemed to belie the cold. And there was something whimsical in the way they bellied in the breeze.

But more memorable was the reaction of the people who walked beneath them: Here in the hard heart of Manhattan, people were laughing and smiling at each other. Strangers were taking each others' pictures. And everyone was grinning like an idiot.

It was as if the gates inspired a childish glee in people of every age, shape and disposition. And, somehow, we were all united in this simple delight.

But was this "art?" Certainly, if part of the definition of art is its ability to make us see the world with new eyes.

Jeanne-Claude died last week at the age of 74 and, as I read her obituary, I kept remembering that trip to see "The Gates."

Most people did not know, the obituary said, that Christo's work had always been an intimate collaboration between him and Jeanne-Claude, and that, without Jeanne-Claude, there would have been no Christo.

There would have been no Reichtag wrapped in silver fabric, no islands surrounded by pink polypropylene off the coast of Miami, no blue and yellow umbrellas blooming in the fields of California and Japan.

Like "The Gates," none of their projects were ever meant to be more than temporary, the obituary said. All of their art, Jeanne-Claude once said, expressed "the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last."

Like the love we have for all the beautiful things of this world. Like the love we have for each other.

This is the opinion of Kenton Robinson.