Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installation art piece The Gates was set up in 2005.

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Dan Flavin's fluorescent light tube sculptures used the objects' eerie glow to give the area around them an unusual energy. Marcel Duchamp is famous for his urinal readymade "Fountain," while Jeff Koons employed vacuums in his early work. Dali created a Lobster Telephone, and trash art is a genre unto itself.

"A Subtlety" was housed in an old sugar plant and depicted a slave woman naked except for a headscarf in the pose of a Sphinx. The sculpture fused ancient art with the abuses of American slavery in a massive sculpture.

Claes Oldenburg is best known for Pop Art sculptures of everyday objects and more specifically his "soft sculptures". His soft sculptures consisted of creating large, everyday objects so they collapse like a deflating balloon.

The Italian Renaissance began in the city-states of Northern Italy, which were ruled over by no king, as a larger project of enhancing their authority. The David was made by Michelangelo to fulfill a contract with the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo, which was the cathedral of Florence. The David's subtle turn, wary glare, and perfect form helped the stature to become a symbol for Florence.

Beginning in 1914 and continuing until his death in 1968, the French artist Marcel Duchamp created sculptures he termed "readymades." Duchamp took essentially everyday objects and mounted them as sculptural pieces in galleries. The pieces grew to be less found objects and more objects built to look like common items, often presented with absurd or humorous titles.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude had proposed the idea for The Gates and submitted proposals as early as 1976. The idea was eventually approved by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was a collector of their artwork, and the installation was put up in Central Park for 2 weeks.

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The Gates was entirely funded by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. While the City of New York supported it, the project was privately funded rather than publicly.

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Jeff Koons is most closely associated with kitsch objects that collapse the distance between high art and "low" pop culture. Duchamp was an early influence on Koons' generation, while the rest are peers who work in other areas of pop art and post-modernism.

Though all of the artists are known for unconventional 20th century sculptures that pushed the boundaries of what sculpture should look like, it was Brancusi's that so confounded customs officials. One of the officials reportedly said "If that's art...I'm a bricklayer."