Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Creative Time, the trailblazing arts nonprofit, continues to push the boundaries of public art under the innovative leadership of Executive Director Justine Ludwig. Since taking the helm in 2018, Ludwig has redefined how the organization champions daring socio-political art in public spaces. Her tenure has seen the realization of groundbreaking projects, such as Charles Gaines’ monumental The American Manifest, eight years in the making, Rashid Johnson’s Red Stage, and Jill Magid’s provocative Tender. With the revival of the Creative Time Summit this September, the largest gathering focused on socially engaged art, more than 350 projects and 2,000 artists spanning New York, the US, the globe, and even outer space will be in attendance.

This anniversary invites reflection on how the organization has reshaped public art and what its visionary future holds. Under Ludwig’s leadership, CT has launched some of its most ambitious social justice initiatives, prioritizing deep engagement with the communities at the heart of each project. She is particularly passionate about public art, recognizing its unique power to tackle issues of accessibility and equity head-on. Some of her most rewarding career moments have come from the meaningful interactions she has fostered between these projects and the communities they serve. As a leader, Ludwig actively challenges conventional leadership models, embracing the responsibility to expand and reshape narrow definitions of what it means to lead.

In a nutshell, Ludwig has redefined the iconic organization, demonstrating how public art not only captures the spirit, stories, and struggles of its community but does so with undeniable flair. We sat down with Ludwig to dive deeper into his vision, discussing everything from the power of art to ignite social change, to the creative process behind some of the most daring installations.

Creative Time supports “art that meets the moment.” Since taking the helm of CT in 2018, what’s one “moment” that stands out to you in the socio-political public art scene that has transformed the trajectory of CT?

Like for so many, the pandemic was a pointed period of real time pivots and responses. It led to a few projects that looked to the ethos of the moment. In particular, Tender, Red Stage, and Moving Chains. Tender by Jill Magid was in response to the realities of the pandemic. Magid disseminated 120,000 2020-issued pennies, the edges of which she engraved with the appropriate phrase, “THE BODY WAS ALREADY SO FRAGILE.” The text evoked both the human body and the body politic — and underscores their interconnection during the coronavirus pandemic. Red Stage by Rashid Johnson opened in Astor Place the day after the mask mandate in New York City was lifted. This piece brought together many collaborators through the frameworks of resurgence, assembly, remedy, call and response, civic action, and play to activate a bright red stage installation by the artist. Charles Gaines’s project Moving Chains, while many years in the works, addressing the manner in which racial inequity is part of the foundation of this nation, felt particularly, heartbreakingly, timely.

During this time, we also initiated the Think Tank, which was an opportunity to facilitate introspective thought around our work and the field more broadly. This work helped bolster new initiatives like CTHQ and the R+D Fellowship, programs intended to support the field and the work of socially engaged artists. Overseen by curator Diya Vij with associate curator Anna Harsanyi, these thought leadership programs are at the foundation of what we do as an organization. They are focused on how we seed the field and what it means to invest in intimacy and deep thinking. I’m very excited that the Summit is returning this year after going on hiatus, also due to the pandemic. It feels like a full circle moment.

Your organization is motivated by a three-pronged mission: art matters, artists’ voices are important in shaping society, and public spaces are places for creative and free expression. In your words, what role does art play in enacting real change in modern day, whether that be through beautification or policy reform?

Artists serve a multifaceted function in society. They make the imagined real and bear witness to the world around them. Art creates a deep understanding of possibility. So often, it allows for things that exist solely in the mind to be enacted in the real world. Also, art occupies a space of profound nuance. It is about the encounter, meeting the work and allowing for it to be made, and remade, through the eyes of the public. Art also allows for the suspension of disbelief and a plasticity that is so needed in times like this. Escape and beauty are also important purposes of art as well. What I find so interesting about the arts is that it can at times serve as a spotlight on the most pressing issues of today, and at other times, it can be an avenue of refuge and transcendence.

Our current project is about dreaming. Working with artists Kite and Alisha Wormsley, Cosmologyscape is a powerful embodiment of our guiding principles. This project began with a gathering of artists who shared their dream expertise–leading to the creation of the Cosmologyscape website where participants are guided into dream work and encouraged to submit their own dreams, both online and through a series of community programs. Linking old traditions with new technologies, each dream inputted into the website became an algorithmically generated quilt square inspired by both symbols from Lakota visual language and Black American quilting traditions. These dreams were then combined into a single data set and moved through another machine learning process to output the patterns, colors, and contours of these public sculptures, wrapped in vibrant mosaics and growing plant life. This piece is rooted deeply in process and engaging with communities in different manners. Also, it is a truly interdisciplinary project, bringing together technology, science, different cultural traditions, and the arts.

In this increasingly polarizing political climate, how can art save us from ourselves and from each other?

I find that so often we put the responsibility of savior on artists. It’s a dangerous proposition. When we believe that all other options have been exhausted, we turn to artists with empty hands and say, “please save us.” What art does, is hold us in our humanity. It serves as a site of possibility. In a recent talk between Sarah Lewis and Sherrilyn Ifill launching Lewis’s latest book The Unseen Truth, Ifill said, “artists help us recharge our imagination.” It is a small phrase that really stuck with me. In times of profound pain and polarization, art can serve as a reminder of possibility beyond our current condition, it can bring attention to different subjectivities and objective truth, it can transport us to a space beyond.

CT Summit has seen the likes of 10,000 live attendees. Ahead of the 2024 CT Summit— with the theme of emergency and its catalyzing impact on revolution—what can attendees expect going into it?

In bringing the Summit back, we reaffirm our commitment to asking the difficult questions, centering artists in transdisciplinary exchange, and to the power of dissensus. States of Emergence: Land After Property and Catastrophe starts with the human relationship to land and explores how this manifests throughout many of the most pressing issues of today, ranging from climate crisis to political violence.

This Summit is curated as a constellation—looking at the crisis as a global, ongoing reality and condition. It comes out of the deep curatorial work that the CT team has been doing over the last few years including New Red Order’s The World’s UnFair, which addressed land rematriation and indigenous futures. 

The program includes presentations at BAM, intimate plenary sessions at BRIC and Pratt, and a party at Sugar Hill Restaurant & Supper Club. We hope that throughout the weekend’s program participants will commingle and create solidarities. I have always been taken by the long-lasting connections and collaborations that grow from the Summit.

The last CT Summit was in 2019. In your eyes, how has CT transformed in the past five years? What issues are top of mind now, more than ever?

Since the last Summit we have found ourselves in a period of ongoing crisis. Too often do we hear that we are experiencing unprecedented hardships. This year’s Summit is framed as a state of emergence—moving beyond a state of emergency. Recent work has been built around intimacies, as well as time and the time scales dreaming. Questions of what we can learn from the past to better inform our understanding of the present and future, as well as an investment in creative processes and world building that extends beyond our own life spans.

This organization has grounded its feet not just in New York, but in cities across the world. In a recent interview with Cerebral Women, you talk about how leading CT means having the privilege and responsibility of responding to the here and “now.” Is it overwhelming to stand at the precipice of so many communities, all at once? Is it exciting? Is it both?

Artists mine the ether and the conditions of the lived world. As an organization, we follow the guiding voice of artists. As a result, while technically everything is ripe for exploration, we follow the commitments of the artists that we commission. We also work on many different scales, whether they are one-night-only programs at CTHQ or dream projects by artists a decade in the making. It is an exciting way of thinking and working, even in its challenges. What I have loved about recent deep dives into our archives is the way that many of our past projects have come to be so deeply tied to the moment that they were created, as to become iconic.  

‍You’ve had a history of artistic education, both from Goldsmiths University of London and Colby College. In what ways can art be taught, and in what ways can art be felt? How is an education in art different from being a lover of art, or are they intertwined?

What I love about art is that it can be experienced on so many different levels. We can approach it with a studied eye or an unencumbered one. Even with my education, I am a true believer in the elemental and unquantifiable power of art. I loved allowing myself to get wrapped up in a piece of art and just feel deeply. My art education is rooted in history and theory. This has offered a lens through which to look at art. I studied post-colonial theory, globalization, Medieval Art History, and sculpture. While disparate in many ways, these areas of study are intertwined, rooted in different ways of seeing, thinking deeply and a desire to make sense of an unordered world. I also studied Butoh and used to make art. As a producer, I have found an understanding of the struggle and intimacy of creation to be profoundly informative.

CT is a champion of public art. How do you care for yourself in private? 

I go through phases of good and bad habits. Sometimes I forget to care for myself. At my best, I make sure I have time to exercise, meditate, and read every day. Strangely, I have found when I reframed exercise as an intentional, creative undertaking, it changed my relationship with working out. Meditation has also been a big part of my life since I was a young person. Those that know me best, most likely have an image of me with a book in hand. I try to steal away any moment I can to read—currently I am completely engrossed by Sarah Lewis’s The Unseen Truth and Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. I also believe that friendships are of the deepest importance—having people who you can always count on to get you flowers and call you in your bullshit as needed. My social circle of family, and chosen family, has been one of the greatest blessings in my life.