Broadway Diary (2002) by Timothy Snell at the 8th Street—NYU Subway Station.

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These days, the New York subway’s artistic legacy runs as deep as the subterranean stations — from the terra-cotta signs designed by the system’s original architects, George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge, to the mosaics of Jack Beal in Times Square to the faceted glass of Barbara Ellmann way out on Van Siclen Avenue in Brooklyn, NY. That’s just in one place. Think about all the other cities with all the other public art, including London, Paris, Moscow, and even Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

An insider’s take the subway art around the world

From 2019, through the pandemic, I stopped at all 424 subway stations under the premise of the original architects, Heins & LaFarge: that the challenge of moving the masses would be met with “aesthetically pleasing solutions, reflecting the styles and materials of their time, and ensuring the new subway would be inviting.” Indeed, with my camera in hand, I would creep around a corner at say, 59th Street and find the piece I was expecting — Blooming by Elizabeth Murray (1996) for example — even more detailed and fantastic than expected, or I would turn the corner at a station where I imagined nothing would exist, such as DeKalb Street, and come across works like DeKalb Improvisation (2005), a glass mosaic representing collage art of various ephemera (playing cards, torn posters, photographs) by Stephen Johnson. My idea for a short photo essay became my own pandemic project.

Perfect Strangers (2017) by Vik Muniz at the 72 Street-Second Avenue Subway Station.

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Art of the New York City subway and its sister Metros around the world

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