Katie Hollander & Nato Thompson

For six weeks over the summer a small audience gathered in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As dusk fell, thousands of pigeons, each with a small LED light tagged to one leg, rose up. They flew in synchronised gangs to the delight of those assembled below. Duke Riley’s Fly By Night performances are the kind of accessible public art events that Creative Time, the nonprofit organisation where Hollander and Thompson are executive director and artistic director respectively, has become known for producing. If Riley’s work was a crowd-pleaser, there’s a serious political and social side to the organisation too, exemplified by Creative Time Reports, a digital platform from which artists offer their perspectives on global current affairs and the annual Creative Time Summit, which this year takes place in Washington, DC, and discusses the subject of grassroots movements, including Black Lives Matter.