Interview with Justine Ludwig, Executive Director of Creative Time

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Creative Time, a visionary public art organization that works with artists “to contribute to the dialogues, debates, and dreams of our time.” Since 1974, Creative Time has commissioned and presented ambitious public art projects for thousands of artists in New York, across the country, around the world, and even in outer space (Trevor Paglen’s Latest photos). We recently spoke with Executive Director Justine Ludwig, a driving force in New York’s public art scene since taking the helm of Creative Time in 2018.

For fifty years, Creative Time has evolved with the socio-political landscape of New York and America. “Since its inception in the 1970s, the organization has always wanted to be rooted in the issues and needs of the present,” Ludwig told the Observer. “That’s something we’ve been consistent with ever since, responding to the moment, responding to it with these great works of public art that make art part of everyday life and committing to supporting artists and their most audacious visions for social change.”

She was quick to clarify that Creative Time’s program is not limited to public sculpture installations. Two years ago, Creative Time also opened a permanent space, CTHQ, intended as a meeting point for art and politics, and a platform for discussing and sharing tactics for creative political action, encouraging cross-working and creative care. “It’s a space for intimate engagement,” Ludwig explained. “We thought about what it means to spend time with other people, to think creatively, and to engage in a collective process.”

The space was inspired by the Creative Time Summit, which began in 2009 and returns this year after being suspended due to the pandemic. “The Summit is a conference we’ve been running for a decade, and we saw that there was a huge need for people to come together in person and think about the issues of the present,” Ludwig said. Creative Time Summit 2024 will take place at BAM in Brooklyn in late September, bringing together artists, activists, and other thought leaders addressing today’s most pressing issues and the importance of public and political art.

A critical aspect of Creative Time’s approach is the impermanence of its interventions, as they are strongly linked to the present, to a specific moment in space and time (like the 2012 Sandcastle Art Competition). Even large-scale installations are seen as temporary, and there is an element of scarcity, Ludwig says, “that otherwise signifies the landscape.” One memorable early effort, beginning in the 1970s, “Art on the Beach,” began when Battery Park was still a beach. “Artists like David Hammons were making work very early on and using that space as a place of engagement. The beach is gone now, so it was rooted in that moment. And so many of our projects are in those spaces and moments of transformation, and I think that signifies the history of New York in an exciting way.”

Ludwig also told the Observer that Creative Times recently launched a fellowship for socially engaged artists, which pairs artists with leading thinkers and experts from different fields to support their research and development. Activating these multidisciplinary conversations is crucial to developing new ideas for social change, she said, especially at this historical moment of new political tensions leading to elections and global instability. “I think it’s important to think of this as a holistic ecosystem. In moments of crisis, we often turn to artists and say, save us, suggest what might be the way forward. How can we think expansive? How can we think outside the box? But often we don’t offer them the resources to help us do that. Resources are not just finances, but also access to expertise in different spaces, infrastructure, even faith, in some ways.”

Projects that interact with social spaces require Creative Time to bring in a complex mix of expertise, from the most technical disciplines, like engineering, to psychology and sociology. “I work with a group of visionaries, but many of them are artists in their own right; they’re all creative in different ways,” Ludwig said. “But we also bring in people from different places and disciplines to participate in each project in one way or another. I think that’s important. Our projects address different problems and needs, so we always have to include these new teams in everything we do.”

In Creative Time’s half-century of existence, public art has become much more present and popular, with both government and corporate entities investing heavily to place art in public spaces. But many of the initiatives that have emerged have focused on creating entertainment venues or “Instragrammable” attractions. There are other ways to approach public art, as Ludwig explains: “I think art can play a fundamental role in our relationship with space; it can signify a changing landscape, it can be something iconic, something exciting, something ‘must-see.’ All of that is part of it. But there’s another way of engaging that thinks more about community and interaction, rather than entertainment.”

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ludwig’s curatorial background and interests lie at the intersection of aesthetics and politics, aesthetics and violence, and aesthetics and globalization. Much of what she considers public art emphasizes the potential social impact of public art rather than public engagement. “It’s not public art because it’s in a public space,” she explains. “It’s public art because it privileges the notion of public, questioning what it means to bring people into a work, whether on a large scale or on an intimate scale.”

On a large or small scale, working in public spaces and with ambitious artists whose work is critical and political presents significant challenges. Ludwig relishes the work—especially finding ways to make the impossible possible. “I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment,” she says. “I’m really drawn to the idea of ​​things that, you know, push the boundaries of expectation and challenge you, even as a producer, in every way. It’s also an exciting creative moment. Something special about what we do is that we’re always helping to produce the work. So often institutions will commission a project, but it’s up to the artist in their studio to make it happen. Instead, we build a team and create the project.”

Production, of course, requires funding, and maintaining financial stability is one of the most important challenges for all nonprofits. When asked what the main factors are for ensuring sustainable funding, Ludwig answered that it is liquidity. “Understanding that times change, needs change, and it is important to be able to respond accordingly.” Relationships are also very important, because people are a source of both knowledge and funds. “We were able to turn to this huge family of people and artists who worked with us and continue to support us with a deep love and commitment to our work. This was critical, especially in moments of crisis or difficult times. People with an unwavering belief in the core mission of the organization are key to making all this happen.”

Attracting and developing the next generation of patrons was, in some ways, the easy part. According to Ludwig, Creative Time’s supporters mostly come organically from their work. “The way we work is very much in line with the thinking of younger generations, addressing inequality in all its manifestations and thinking about aspirations for the future.”

Looking to the future, Ludwig told the Observer that Creative Time wants to delve deeper, but also very subtly, into the daily lives of New Yorkers. “We’re coming up with projects that kind of creep into people’s everyday lives. It’s not necessarily a huge sculpture, but something you stumble upon. I think that’s what’s sacred about public art: it can be a destination, but it can also be something you trip over. I like the idea of ​​it becoming part of more of New Yorkers’ lives, so that they can see this blockbuster and transformative piece of public art, or they can have a transcendent moment on their way to work in a deeply unexpected way. It’s important to think on both scales at the same time.”

One of the upcoming projects that will translate this alternative approach into public art is the continuation Landscape Cosmology by artists Kite and Alisha B Wormsley, selected in the 2022 Creative Time Open Call. The multi-dimensional art project encourages the exploration of dream practices through an interface designed by the artist; the project website invites people to submit their dreams, which are then interpreted using machine learning and translated into digital quilts. Concluding our conversation, Ludwig commented: “I believe we are an organization that addresses the most pressing issues of the moment. After working in museums, I finally asked myself who institutions are for. At Creative Time, art is not separate from life, but deeply intertwined with it.”