Creative Time Celebrates 50 Years

April 2nd, 2024

This year, Creative Time turns 50. Half a century of innovation, creation, and radicality. Over this time, Creative Time has been an evolving entity—transforming to respond to the contours of a dynamic world. Working with over 2,000 artists and realizing over 350 new commissions, we have centered artists in the landscape of New York City, and beyond. We believe that artist’s voices matter and, since our founding, we have been committed to artists in experimentation by pushing their practice and executing on the scale of dreams.
 

 
Creative Time is rooted in the deeply temporal nature of this work—timely, pointed, and sublime. Born in the 1970s, a period where art was often defined by the conceptual and the ephemeral, we continue to push against the boundaries of what can be considered art. Through profoundly considered site-specificity, we explore unexpected spaces and challenge the conventions of public art.
 

 
Our work has come to mark important moments in political and social movements over the last half century. For us, public art is art that directly engages and implicates the public. Engendering an active, as opposed to passive, arts experience. Inspired by the ever-changing now, Creative Time realizes art that meets the moment.
 

 
Throughout our history, Creative Time has inspired transformation and fostered communities of co-conspirators, dreamers, believers, and dissenters. I am grateful to the larger family that has come together around Creative Time since our founding. It is a group of visionaries who have collectively made so much magic happen. This is what has allowed Creative Time endure the test of time, the deep commitment of so many willing to take risks. As always, you are a part of that too. Thank you for being part of this journey with us, and if you’re just joining, welcome to the family.
 

Images (top to bottom):
Jenny Holzer, FOR NEW YORK CITY, 2004. Photo: Charlie Samuels. 
Otto Piene, New York Sky Event: East Harlem Sky Events, 1976. 
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Show: Part One, 1984. Photo: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.
Yoko Ono, IMAGINE PEACE, for Pledges of Allegiance, 2017. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.