Overview
Since 1974, Creative Time has championed both emerging and established artists in creating ground-breaking public artworks that address the most pressing issues of our time. Over the last 46 years, we have often found that some of the most exciting, impactful, and ambitious ideas come from artists who have not yet received widespread recognition. As New York City’s vanguard public art organization, we see it as our responsibility to support the next generation of great artists working within public space.
Launched in 2019, Creative Time’s Emerging Artist Open Call is a biennial initiative that offers early-career artists the opportunity to create their first major public artwork.
Following the resounding success of our inaugural Emerging Artist Open Call–which culminated in Risa Puno’s The Privilege of Escape–we were pleased to launch the second iteration. Proposals were accepted via Submittable between January 21 and March 23, and the selected project will be presented in New York City in 2021. We welcomed proposals from New York City-based practicing artists at a critical career juncture who have not yet received substantial support from a major cultural institution.
We are most interested in ideas that take an unconventional exhibition format, speak to a pressing social issue, and engender public dialogue and debate. There is no secret formula for size or scale–proposals can range from unassuming to dramatic. Most of all, this should be an opportunity for emerging artists to experiment with new ideas in the public realm, and to take advantage of Creative Time’s decades of experience supporting artists and their ideas, from conception to realization.
