This year, Art Production Fund’s birthday cake twinkles with 25 candles (plus one to grow on!). For the past quarter-century, this women-led nonprofit has commissioned and produced a mesmerizing array of memorable and monumental public art projects. Created by a cadre of emerging and established artists, these works have been installed in unexpected places throughout Rockefeller Center and across the U.S.

Rudolf Stingel, for example, brought wall-to-wall carpeting to one of Grand Central Station’s grand halls in “Plan B” (2004). To create their famed “Marfa Prada” (2005), artists Elmgreen & Dragset constructed a true-to-form luxury storefront in the desert. (Look for its onscreen cameo in Beyoncé’s current tour.) And the bright septet of cairns in sculptor Ugo Rondinone’s oft-Instagrammed “Seven Magic Mountains” (2006–2016) brings an anomalous dose of radiant color to the earth-tone-dominated land art genre. These, along with hundreds of other boundary-busting art installations, events, and programs, have been shaped by Art Production Fund’s can-do dedication to supporting contemporary artists to dream big, reach new and expansive audiences, and bring elaborate, large-scale projects into being.

Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center have been intertwined from the start. When Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen founded the organization in 2000, they worked from an office headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. About 16 years later, Casey Fremont and Kathleen Lynch took over as executive director and director of operations, respectively. Over the years, Art Production Fund and Rockefeller Center have developed a fruitful, ongoing partnership. Thanks to their combined efforts, artists get the chance to bring big, bold ideas to a high-profile location, in front of a huge and eclectic audience: the streams of visitors and workers who pass through Rockefeller Center daily. And, in turn, the city-within-the-city has become a buzzing hub of compelling, regularly rotating public art by some of the most exciting contemporary artists working today.

In 2008, Art Production Fund, along with co-producer Jeffrey Deitch, presented its inaugural public-art project at Rockefeller Center: “Electric Fountain,” a soaring million-dollar monument by British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Fabricated over the course of a couple of years from steel and blue neon tubing, the 35-foot-tall sculpture created the illusion of cascading water with 3,390 specially programmed, custom-made LED light bulbs. Taking a cue from fountains historically set in public squares, the giant illuminated artwork stood at the base of 30 Rock, glowing and flowing above The Rink and skaters below.

The project made a splash, landing television coverage and features in The New York Times. And, for the artist duo, it was a chance to realize an epic idea in lights in the center of New York City. “It was just wonderful to have everybody's energy behind it. Everybody pushed every single boundary they had to make this thing happen,” Sue Webster told The Center Magazine during a video call, recalling the “unfettered energy” fueling the endeavor. “There was a sheer belief and determination that made it happen.”

This unwavering belief in artists is the heartbeat of Art Production Fund’s work. “We always trust the artist’s vision,” said Lynch. “That’s an ethos that we have, and we take it really seriously.” Propelled by this philosophy, the nimble nonprofit and its lean team of just three full-time staff members support artists with both financial backing and on-the-ground guidance.

“Being a small organization, we've been able to be quite flexible and work as needed with artists, filling the space of support that a gallery maybe can't offer, and the artist’s own studio doesn't have the resources to provide,” Fremont said. “We've been able to be really agile and flexible in how we work. That's the benefit of being a small organization.”

Since debuting Noble and Webster’s “magic fountain” on the Plaza, Art Production Fund has brought a wild array of public art projects to the campus. From meditative and moving to downright rowdy, the installations invite visitors to interact with art in fresh ways, beyond the traditional confines of museums and galleries. With the arrival of Derrick Adams’s joyful “Funtime Unicorns” (2022), for instance, visitors of all ages could climb and play on glossy structures, similar to bouncy playground rides, depicting the mystical beasts in ebony with rainbow manes. "In each one of these sculptures,” Adams said, “My hope is that young Black boys and girls have a chance to laugh and bounce, climb and lean.”

The exhibition series Art in Focus, started in late 2018, anchors Art Production Fund’s public arts programming at Rockefeller Center and showcases art by a selected artist, a few times a year, in spaces throughout the campus. Each Art in Focus exhibition appears in Midtown, as if by magic, after a labor-intensive, all-night installation that happens under the cover of darkness — and must be completed by 6am, when the Today Show starts taping the national news. Depending on the contours of the given art project, these high-drama installs can require serious technical muscle, like cranes, heavy machinery, and big rig trucks hauling sections of colossal sculptures to be rapidly reassembled on site.

This was the case with conceptual artist Sanford Biggers’ “Oracle,” a hulking cast-bronze sculpture, weighing 7.64 US tons, that was installed at the entrance to the Channel Gardens. This monument was part of an expansive 2021 Art In Focus showcase — the first campus-wide takeover for the series. The outcome? A holistic experience that Fremont called “a triumph.” For Biggers, it also had a rippling influence on his artmaking practice and career.

“The creation of ‘Oracle’ in collaboration with Art Production Fund and the Rockefeller Center exhibition transformed my approach to art making,” Biggers said. “It opened new avenues in public art, and, since the showcase, the scale of my work has extended beyond the studio. ‘Oracle’ has become an icon in my work, and the monumental scale of the showcase has provided opportunities for large-scale public projects across the country.”

After the Art in Focus exhibition wrapped, “Oracle” embarked on a journey across the U.S. to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where it was displayed from March 2023 to July 2024, before landing at its final home at the Donum Estate in Sonoma, California.

Rockefeller Center’s commitment to Art in Focus furthers Art Production Fund’s efforts in significant ways, Fremont and Lynch noted. Instead of constantly needing to learn the technical requirements and ins and outs of installing site-specific art in one-off venues, they’ve been able to foster a deep understanding of what works best in this iconic setting, from turning former ad spaces into homes for vinyl murals to hanging art from the flagpoles ringing The Rink. “It's allowed us to have ongoing programming that has momentum,” Fremont said. “People now expect it when they come to Rockefeller Center—and they're excited about what artist is next.”

Bringing youthful creativity to the mix, the next generation of art lovers gets a chance to participate in the public-art-making process through Art Sundae, a hands-on workshop series for children that’s often led by the featured Art in Focus artist.

The art from these sessions gets displayed in a diorama-like window visible from Rockefeller Plaza. Workshops have included embellishing 3D-printed replicas of Australian ceramicist Jake Clark’s nostalgic vessels, concocting cake sculptures from acrylic molding paste with Will Cotton, and painting sea-creature sculptures with mixed-media artist Dominique Fung.

“As someone who often explores diasporic identity, cultural memory, and the fluidity of self through painting, the opportunity to present my work in such a historic, public space carried immense weight,” Fung said. “Art Sundae allowed me to engage with younger audiences and to remember that art isn’t only for rarefied institutions—it’s also about play, education, and the freedom to imagine.”

During the decades of Art Production Fund’s existence, the rise of handheld technology and social media has fundamentally transformed the experience of seeing, documenting, and sharing art in ways that weren’t previously possible. In turn, some public art has turned into viral sensations and must-see destinations. “That's really changed the hunger for public art and interesting experiences in the world,” Fremont noted. “And, at the same time, it's pushed us to think about visitor experience and creating things that aren't just photogenic, but require you to be physically present with the artwork.”

To mark 25 years of bringing imagination-igniting artwork to surprising spaces, Art Production Fund celebrated with an immersive slumber-party-themed bash at their annual gala — a beloved art-scene event that Vogue described as true-to-form “in all its kitschy, campy, detail-oriented glory.”

Looking forward to what’s ahead for the organization, Fremont expressed interest in eventually producing a book or publication to further document their projects. “But we also want to take time to reflect on how we can continue to evolve the program to be representative of contemporary life,” she said, “and be as effective as possible in terms of bringing art to the public with new programs, new initiatives, and new ways to show art.”

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