Great cities need great public arts organizations. And Creative Time, founded in 1974, is exactly the type of arts organization that New York City needs. Now more than ever.

Spurred by the indomitable energy and passion of Anne Pasternak, for over 30 years Creative Time has been responsible for some of the city's most powerful and important art installations in our public spaces. Most notable among them is Tribute in Light, an awe-inspiring installation consisting of over 80 searchlights that each year on September 11th are placed on the site of the World Trade Center in remembrance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Creative Time's mission is to "commission, produce and present the most important, ground-breaking, challenging and exceptional art of our times; art that infiltrates the public realm and engages millions of people in New York City and across the globe." And time and time again, they achieve just that. Their manifesto says it best:

We are guided by a passionate belief in the power of art to create inspiring personal experiences as well as foster social progress. We are thrilled when art breaks into the public realm in surprising ways, reaching people beyond traditional limitations of class, age, race and education. Above all, we privilege artists' ideas. We get excited about their dreams and respond to them by providing big opportunities to expand their practices and take bold new risks that value process, content and possibilities. We like to make the impossible possible, pushing artists beyond their comfort levels, just as they push us beyond ours. In the process, artists engage in a dynamic conversation between site, audience, and context, offering up new ideas about who an artist is and what art can be, pushing culture into fresh new directions. In the process, our artists' temporary interventions into public life promote the democratic use of public space as a place for free and creative expression.

Whether it's Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers at The Museum of Modern Art or David Byrne's Playing the Building at the Battery Maritime Building, each year the Character Approved Creative Time stretches our thinking of what we define as "public art." And for this we should all be grateful.

[Image: Wikimedia]