"Today it would be impossible," philanthropist John Kaldor says of Wrapped Coast, the iconic public art work he helped make happen in 1969, when a pair of avant-garde artists covered 2.5 kilometres of Sydney coastline in white fabric.

Back then the bureaucracy involved made it seem impossible too, with much of Sydney's pristine coast under the jurisdiction of the Navy or Army. But Kaldor found artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude so charismatic that they easily convinced him that "the most important thing I could do was to find them a coastline to wrap", he tells RN's The Art Show.

Kaldor located a coastline and the resulting work forever changed the Australian public's relationship to contemporary art, but also had a profound impact on its curator — "it changed my life," he says.

Fifty years and 34 public art works later, Kaldor Public Art Projects is an institution that continues to bring the biggest names in art to Australia's public spaces, from the sublime (Marina Abramovic and video artist Bill Viola) to the provocative (Gregor Schneider's Guantanamo-like jail cells on Bondi beach).

To mark Kaldor Public Art Projects' 50th anniversary, here are five works that struck a major chord with Australian audiences and in John Kaldor's words, "widen[ed] their vision to experience something different."

1. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Wrapped Coast (1969)

The artist Christo directs workers and volunteers at Sydney's Little Bay, during the creation of Wrapped Coast. ( Harry Shunk )

It took husband-and-wife team Christo and Jeanne-Claude four weeks to shroud Sydney's Little Bay in enormous lengths of light-weight synthetic fabric, with the help of over 100 workers.

The pair, aged in their 30s, specialised in wrapping monuments in fabric and rope, but for years had been searching for a slab of coastline. Then in 1968 they met businessman John Kaldor, who, like Christo, had been a post-war refugee.

"We turned to John and said, 'John you are Australian, Australia has the biggest coastline in the world, probably we can find … a small section to wrap up temporarily, like a work of art," Christo tells RN's The Art Show.

But how was Christo's vision treated by locals? "Incredible, civil, very exciting," is how he describes the reactions to his astonishing work. The Australian public would famously not embrace other monumental pieces of design — such as Melbourne's yellow Vault and even the Sydney Opera House — but it was hard not to appreciate the epic scale and overwhelming texture of Wrapped Coast.

"Much of the high cliffs of Little Bay was installed by rock climbers. I can remember a number of architectural students who came to work on the project, too," recalls Christo.

Nineteen-year-old Australian artist Imants Tiller was one of those students. Wrapped Coast exposed him to a new art world, and also the patronage of John Kaldor.

"I kind of discovered that there was an international avant-garde that Christo belonged to," he says in the documentary It All Started With A Stale Sandwich (screening as Doing It In Public: The Kaldor Projects on ABC).

Christo himself found the freedom to dream as large as he wanted, helped by the enthusiastic volunteers.

"For me it was something unbelievable that happened in my life," he says.

2. Jeff Koons: Flower Puppy (1995-1996)

Carpeted in colourful spring annuals, Koons's Puppy wanted to uplift viewers, pure and simple. ( Eric Sierins )

This four-storey-high puppy blooming in petunias and marigolds was a monument to cheer and unapologetic kitsch.

Sitting obediently out the front of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Puppy was unavoidably eye-catching, and according to Kaldor Public Art Projects, seen by more than 1.8 million people.

"I hope Puppy works like a cereal box," artist Jeff Koons told ABC News at the time. "You get up in the morning and you need something to make you feel optimistic so that you feel like you have a future, and I hope Puppy does that for the public."

Bringing a postmodern giant like Koons to Sydney increased the profile of the work, a 12.4-metre-high metal construction planted and gardened in Sydney, that lent itself to Sydney Harbour's sparkling landscape.

After a longer-than-usual stay, the popular Puppy (a west highland terrier, to be exact) was relocated to another harbour city — Bilbao in Spain.

3. Jonathan Jones: barrangal dyara (2016)

In barranga dyara, 15,000 ceramic shields marked the outline of the Garden Palace, where a fire in 1882 destroyed countless Aboriginal objects. ( Supplied: Peter Greig )

Covering 20,000 square metres of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, Jonathan Jones' epic artwork rivalled Wrapped Coast in scale.

Barrangal dyara means "skin and bones" in the local Sydney Gadigal language, and the artwork was made up of three parts, including a physical outline that followed the exact perimeter of the former Garden Palace, a 19th-century building that burnt down in 1882, destroying hundreds of Aboriginal objects.

"When we lost those objects it was an enormous kind of cultural genocide that occurred," Jones, an artist of the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi nations of south-east Australia, explained in an ABC documentary.

Fifteen thousand stark white ceramic shields were laid around the outline, creating an aerial-view picture of the vast cultural loss that occurred.

Tall native grasses overtook a section of the normally European-style herb garden, and soundscapes recorded with Aboriginal communities played out to audiences and passersby, most of whom were unaware of this significant history.

4. Gilbert and George: The Singing Sculpture (1973)

In 1973 Gilbert and George performed 112 times a day over six days at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. ( Supplied: AGNSW )

Before living statues became a specialty of buskers worldwide, the performance artists Gilbert and George were pioneering the form — and their Singing Sculpture drew thousands in Sydney and Melbourne.

Some stayed watching for hours at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as Gilbert and George, dressed in suits and covered in metallic paint, moved elegantly around to a scratchy record playing the Depression-era tune Underneath the Arches.

Like John Kaldor and most of the artists commissioned as part of Kaldor Public Art Projects, the UK-based artists (and husbands) believe in art that engages freely with emotions.

"We're amazed that people still remember it so well, even people who couldn't have been alive then," George said in a 2010 ABC interview about the performance.

"We knew that art that reaches people has to go beyond form. That the form must be there, but the form must carry the meaning over to the viewer."

5. John Baldessari: Your Name in Lights (2011)

Your Name In Lights saw the names of 100,000 Sydneysiders emblazoned on the Australian Museum. ( Supplied: Jamie Williams )

Around 100,000 people registered to have their names lit up on a Broadway-style sign for US conceptual artist John Baldessari's work.

Lighting up around the clock, with each name glimmering for just 15 seconds of fame, Your Name in Lights was installed at Sydney's Australian Museum and is one of the most popular Kaldor Projects yet.

Baldessari's mesmerising signage advertised an old-fashioned manner of celebrity while allowing a huge number of people to take part in a moment of fame.

For John Kaldor, a key purpose of Kaldor Public Art Projects is to involve people, with no financial cost to them.

"Not to frighten people away (with the idea) that art is for the elite and you have to be an intellectual," he explains.

"Art is for everyone and we can all learn from art and we can all experience and enjoy it."

Doing It In Public: The Kaldor Projects airs on ABC TV September 24 at 9.30pm, and iview.

Making art public: 50 years of Kaldor Public Art Projects is at Art Gallery of NSW until February 16.