MEREDITH JOHNSON
Creative Time
Date: Saturday 9.19
Start Time: 10:00am
Location: Rm. 204, Barney building
Founded in 1974, Creative Time’s history of commissioning, producing, and presenting adventurous public artworks of all disciplines began in the midst of a significant period. Artists were experimenting with new forms and media. Their work moved out of galleries and museums and into the public realm. At the same time, New York’s citizens responded to the City’s deterioration, which was prompted by the fiscal crisis, with the City Beautification movement. Also recognizing the significance of art in society, the federal government established the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to herald the role of artists and introduce uninitiated audiences to contemporary art. Creative Time derives its values from this historic impetus to foster artistic experimentation, enrich public space and the everyday experience, and forefront artists as key contributors to democratic society.
In the past 35 years, Creative Time has explored New York City through the dialog between artist and site. Creative Time’s earliest programs invigorated vacant storefronts as well as neglected landmarks like the U.S. Customs House in Lower Manhattan. After gaining early renown for Art on the Beach (1978 – 1985), which fostered collaborations between visual artists, architects, and performing artists at the Battery Park City Landfill, Creative Time soon spread its programs throughout the City. Presenting projects on billboards, landmark buildings, buses, deli cups, ATM machines, and the Internet, among numerous other venues, Creative Time broadened the definitions of both art and public space throughout the 1980s and 90s. In particular, Creative Time encouraged artists to address timely issues such as the AIDS pandemic, domestic violence, and racial inequality. In recent years, the organization has extended its gaze nationally to places like New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, and Memphis, and many others. In 2009, Creative Time is now continuing their mission to work with artists on dream projects by launching a new global residency program.
Meredith Johnson is a Curator and Producer at Creative Time. She joined Creative Time in 2007, where some of her recent projects include Spencer Finch’s The River That Flows Both Ways on the High Line, a video program for JetBlue’s new Terminal 5 at JFK, and the City of Louisville’s Public Art Master Plan that will be launched later this year. In addition to her work at Creative Time, Johnson was a curator at Artists Space in New York from 2007 – 2009. Prior to coming to Creative Time, she was the Assistant Director at Minetta Brook, an organization that presented projects like Robert Smithson’s Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island and Watershed: The Hudson Valley Art Project. Johnson regularly lectures on art in public space at colleges and universities in New York and throughout the United States. Before living in New York, she worked as an independent curator and for a number of non-profit institutions in San Francisco, CA and Washington, D.C. She received her BA in Art from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and her MA in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts.
