NEW YORK—“This World & Nearer Ones,” the title of the first incarnation of New York nonprofit Creative Time’s new public art quadrennial on Governors Island (PLOT) might do better to read “Another World, & a Near One.” Because that’s more what the exhibition feels like — another world, not quite this one, but not too far away either. Something hovering and close but undoubtedly detached. Kind of like Governors Island itself.

Governors Island comprises 172 largely green acres off the southern tip of Manhattan. Only 800 yards, or a roughly three-minute free ferry ride, away from Manhattan, it is remarkably close and easily accessible for New Yorkers. And yet it feels like a world apart, not least because taking the ferry is generally something most New Yorkers don’t do. Also because the atmosphere there is more colonial New England than modern-day New York.

This can be explained by the island’s history, which is mostly as a military base — used alternately by the British and the Americans in the 1700s and then long term by the U.S. starting in 1800. The Coast Guard took up residence (literally — it was a residential community as well as a base of operations) in 1966 and stayed for 30 years. Then, in 2001, President Clinton designated 22 acres of the island a national monument, and the following year, President George W. Bush symbolically sold the remainder of the island to the city of New York for $1.

But putting the island on the map of New York is more work than just a change of hands, as Leslie Koch, president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC), pointed out at the June 19 press preview for PLOT, especially given the challenge of getting New Yorkers to travel somewhere not accessible by taxi or subway. For Koch, a big part of the solution has been using the arts — exhibitions, festivals, concert series, and more — as a draw for the island, which is open to the public only on summer weekends (this year’s closing date is October 12).

On Saturday, that vision of Governors Island as an artistic haven reaches a new level, thanks to Creative Time. The public art organization’s president and artistic director, Anne Pasternak, first visited the island in 1996, when the Coast Guard was just leaving. It was a ghost town then, she said, replete with empty barracks, pool, bowling alley, and movie theater. She was enchanted, and it became her “dream of dreams” to host a major public art exhibition on the island. Thirteen years later, that dream is finally being realized with the opening of the first edition of PLOT, which features 19 artists and collectives from nine countries and is, in Koch’s words, the most ambitious project the island has hosted to date.

The participating artists may not have been there on the island with Pasternak in 1996, but to a large extent it feels as if they had been. According to Mark Beasley, a curator and producer at Creative Time and this show's organizer, most of the artists visited the island in winter, when it was closed to the public and devoid of life, save for the empty buildings. The result is a public art installation that is surprisingly quiet and subtle — and somewhat dark and brooding — for its placement on what’s billed as a green, joyous summertime destination. (A prime example of this contrast is the contribution of Teresa Margolles, who is also getting attention this summer for her project at the Venice Biennale. Margolles’s work Muro Baleado [Shot-Up Wall], contains a displaced wall from her hometown of Culiacán, Mexico, in front of which a violent shooting related to organized crime and the drug trade took place. Mexican workers will reassemble the wall, ridden with bullet holes and blood marks, in a picnic area on the island during opening weekend.)

Which isn’t to say that the quadrennial is a total downer. But it’s different from what one might read into the words “public art exhibition.” Those seeking large, brightly colored outdoor sculptures that catch your eye and make for great photo ops should be forewarned. PLOT’s artworks, ephemeral pieces that tend to favor video and performance over traditional media, must be sought out by visitors, since most of them are housed in historic buildings — which in and of themselves are fascinating sites of exploration. They contemplate the past and the future (mostly eschewing the present) of Governors Island and encourage viewers to do the same. As is typical of Creative Time projects, PLOT is a thinking woman’s exhibition.