Subway Art - Lower Manhattan

8th street - NYU (R)

Timothy Snell

Broadway Diary, 2002

Timothy Snell’s “Broadway Diary“ at the BMT 8th Street station was installed in 2002. 40 "porthole" mosaics by Snell enliven the walls of the 8th St - NYU subway station. They portray neighborhood scenes and landmarks like the Cooper Union, Astor Place, and Washington Arch. An MTA Arts for Transit project. The loose gestural rendering and free use of color with simplified imagery injects a light moment in the hectic schedule of the commuter passing through the station.

Brooklyn Bridge - City Hall (4,5,6)

Mark Gibian

Cable Crossing, 1996

This installation by Mark Gibian is made from galvanized steel cables that undulate across the station's skylight. The materials and their use refer to the Brooklyn Bridge's historic use of steel cables as a building material. An MTA Arts for Transit project. This cabling exists along the roof of the main station entrance beneath a grate with some little glass cubes letting natural light down into the station, and form the fences between the areas within and outside of fare control where there no turnstiles. It is a tribute to the innovative cabling used on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fulton Center (A,C,J,Z,2,3,4,5)

James Carpenter Design Associates, Grimshaw Architects, Arup

Sky Reflector-Net, 2014

The monumental sculpture embraces light and air, creating a distinctive focal point within Lower Manhattan’s urban fabric. The oculus, roughly the same size as the Guggenheim spiral, holds a "sky reflector net" created by James Carpenter, which brings sunlight deep into the station. In spring 2015, the station's 65,000 square feet of retail on five levels opened. The new Fulton Center is expected to service up to 300,000 passengers per day, and its crown jewel is a 120-foot-tall oculus designed by Grimshaw. There's nothing quite like it in the New York City subway system today. While we're used to cramped corridors with low ceilings and narrow spaces, the Fulton St. Transit Center is massive with wide open vistas and a lot of space for people. The transfer between the A and C platform and the 4 and 5 will be instantly easier and quicker.

Response to Public Art

Page 86

Eccles:

• Mayor Dinkins was a supporter of art, but Mayor Giuliani’s not. Having an administration that was unsupportive(uninterested) was in hindsight a major source of success in freeing artists from the political process 
• traditional public spaces, and parks are managed by private spaces - run and maintained by private organization, ie. Central Park Conservancy, the Madison Square Park Conservancy and the Bryant Park Restoration and Development Corporation (primary partners)
• rejects the idea that a park has a “message” or “brand”

• debunks the notion that art stood for something other than itself
  it’s about individual not communal

Pasternak:

• Creative Time: to develop projects with artists that would free them from city constraints and avoid bureaucratic obstacles. (work extra hard to have access to the public spaces that they want to use)
• Percent for Art: officially mandated to work within the public spaces

Finklepearl:

• John Ahearn’s Bronx Bronze

• He’s a white resident of the South Bronx, was known both in the his neighborhood and in the art world for his painted bronze sculptures depicting local residents in a vibrant and positive fashion--using a medium traditionally reserved for heroes and allegorical figures to depict everyday people. 
• Ahearn created casts of local residents--a young girl on roller skates and two boys, one alone, another with his dog--for the commission. Some community members said sculptures represented a side of their neighborhood that they did not want presented--especially in their highly prominent location along the Grand Concourse, a main Bronx thoroughfare for residents, tourists and outsiders visiting Yankee Stadium.
• The youth depicted in the sculptures were idle--hanging out on the street--and, some felt, intimidating, even reminiscent of drug dealers and hustlers from the neighborhood. Essentially, people think he is racist. 

• Bob Rivera’s sculpture Open Voyage
• Bob Rivera's Open Voyage is a colorful, abstract work located on the roof of the gymnasium at P.S. 279. The sculpture is framed out of pieces of aluminum bolted together. 
• An aluminum skeletal structure provides support at the back, as do brightly-colored diagonal aluminum poles which help distribute weight.

• Percent for Art (publicly funded, governmental public art entity, is a good place to seek a more collective voice. 

Curating Public Narrative #3

By: Kwang Min Ko

Subway Station: 59^th – COLUMBUS CIRCLE

“Whirls and Twirls”, Sol Lewitt (2007)

The colorful glass pieces displayed in subway stands out from the plain white color subway station walls. It catches people’s eye because the bright colors of wall brighten up the dark subway. However because the color is too bright, it seems to fail to blend in with subway environment.

“Hello Columbus”, NYC Artists & public school Students (1992)

            
The artwork is to commemorates the 500th anniversary of Columbus voyage to the “New World”, the collection of the 74 3’ x 3’ aluminum panels created by various artists and students from all grade levels. The collection of art creates subway environment in to museum environment.

Subway Station: FIFTH AVENUE/59^th ST

“Urban Oasis”, Ann Schaumburger (1997)

The title explains the art pieces itself, the collection of cute glass mosaic animal murals create an image of an oasis in dark gloomy subway station. The animals include butterflies, horses, birds, chimpanzees, polar bear mosaics, etc. Most of the animals are moving through their group like one family, the collection of artwork sooth the harsh, and chaotic city subway environment.

Subway Station: 81^ST. – MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

“For Want of a Nail” (1999)

The subway station reminds of zoo; the animal from past and present harmonized and well blended on subway wall. Each art pieces uses variety colors of glass and ceramic mosaic to create vivid color to each art pieces. The color plays a big role in each work, the extinct animals are made in grey color mosaics and present animals are made in their living animals (As shown in the picture). The artwork are displayed through out the subway, the animals are displayed upper level of the subway and the earth’s core artwork is displayed on staircase that guides to the lower level.

Subway Station: 110^th  - CATHEDRAL PARKWAY

“Migrations”, Christopher Wynter (1999)

“Overall, the panels represent the ideas of uprooting, migration, and progress in symbolic from,” says artist Christopher Wynter. The installed art pieces all include mosaic wheels representing travelling to different places. There are artist himself and background mosaics in the art pieces symbolizing, his experience and feelings when he migrate to NYC. The concept of migration has well blended with idea of subway “migrates”, to new locations.

Dominique DeVito

Article fleshing out

Pasternak 

Is the audience the primary factor in the success of the artwork?

Finkelpearl 

Yes, you must understand the site where the art will live. For example, in a school the school community is the “public”.

Eccles 

I wanted to move away from thinking about government programs, and put more interest in the work and what artists were doing in their own spaces. Privileging artists over other concerns was radical, but we had to be advocates for artists, because government officials would not be. 

There were two forces that effected how public art was thought about in New York, the Tilted Arc controversy, the removal of Richard Serra’s piece from federal plaza in 1989. 

(Tilted Arc was a site-specific sculpture originally commissioned by the United States General Services Administration Arts-in-Architecture program for the Foley Federal Plaza in front of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Manhattan, New York City. The post-minimalist artwork was designed by the well-known artist Richard Serra and constructed in 1981. However, after much debate, it was removed in 1989 following a lawsuit. Richard Serra is one of the leading minimalist sculptors and started his notable body of work after his graduation from Yale University where he studied fine art. This work exemplifies his minimalist, conceptual style. Tilted Arc was created when Serra was forty years old and was already a respected artist; thus, there was much attention given to the removal of his work.)

This made people scared of commissioning new work. The second is the predominance of site specificity, artists were more interested in typologies than making work that revealed something about the space. Rachel Whiteread’s Water Tower 1998 is a good example of being interested in site later in the process.  

Shifting away from site as a                                        stating point liberates artists. 

Four Subway Stops in Brooklyn with Public Artwork 

Dominique DeVito

1) The Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center stop is the last stop in Brooklyn on the N and D lines. It’s an extremely busy hub and is home to the Hook Line and Sinker installation, by George Trakas. It was installed in 2004 and Trakas collaborated with diDomenico and Partners to build it. Hook is polished and thermal granite installed on the walls, Line is brushed steel and limestone hanging under the skylight, and Sinker is granite installed in the middle of the staircase there. I think the narrative here is that these pieces can be so easily overlooked, I’ve passed this station and been in it so many times and have genuinely never realized these were here. It can be assumed that since this station was once Atlantic-Pacific street, that Hook Line and Sinker has a lot of relevance.     

2) The Brooklyn Museum subway stop (Eastern Parkway) is home to a collection of artwork. The ornamental decorations were once a part of 19th and 20th century NYC buildings. Keystones, plaques and boarders were saved from the demolished structures and now reside in this location. Their purpose is to spread awareness about NY’s architectural richness. They were once part of the Brooklyn Museum collection. They hold so much narrative, due to their age and where they come from.   

3) Located in the Union Street station on the R line, CommUnion by Emmett Wigglesworth is a beautiful depiction. It is comprised of 22 enamel panels displaying a union of black and white patterned hands and faces all in a tangle. This is a deeply rooted reflection of the diverse culture of this neighborhood. The narrative here is the telling of diversity in the surrounding area. This 1994 installation still has as much  relevance today. 

4) At the 18th avenue station on the D line in Bensonhurst, is the Bensonhurst Gardens made by Francesco Simeti in 2012. Much like the Union Street piece, this installation is representative of cultural diversity. Each plant and flower represents the widely diverse neighborhood of Bensonhurst. The work is made up of glass panels, light boxes and depictions of gardens. The images display a landscape with American plants. The piece’s natural appeal is welcomed in this cement ridden section of Brooklyn.  

Response to Public Art

Page 82 to 83

Finkelpearl and Eccles discuss the differences in perception of spaces and objects that private or public. Here in America public often has a negative context as something of diminished quality. According to many surveys, upper-middle class is the main consumer of the art, which is a relatively small group of people. Public realm, on the other hand, makes art more accessible to the larger audience. The acceccability to the wide audience imposes cirtain rules that govern the decisions on what to install. Before it was believed that public art should send a strong message to the audience. But, as Eccles discribed, it is also important to preserve the artistic adentity of contributors. Public spaces should serve as an open platform that would allowe to start a conversation. Both of the projects below preserve artist's interests and visions that they successfully implemented in other project and brings their art to the new platform.

This is HeartSeat by Stereotank.




Nicolas Holider, Head of Goliath

Thinking about the Public in Public Art 

by Tom Eccles and Tom Finkelpearl with Ann Pasternak

               According to the conversation between Eccles and Finkelpearl, during towards the 90s, the Percent for Art program had more artists who were of color. Art is a barrier breaker that does not discriminate but the exhibitions themselves are judged by people who do not necessarily understand the concept of using art as a bridge into other cultures: "For example, working with a Japanese-American artist in Chinatown or a Puerto Rican artist in Dominican Washington Heights is a bridge-building exercise versus whether it's an Asian artist in an Asian community and a Latino artist in a Latino community."

               Finkelpearl argues that the problem was meant to create diverse art in the diverse cultural mixture of New York. By introducing arts not native to a certain community, it required the audience to take a step forward and accept the art as being unfamiliar. The artists are expected to pull the audience into their work; by having the community interact with the process, the product is not just a classified piece belonging to a X artist from X country, it becomes a public piece that belongs to the community. 

Posted by Patrick Chen

SUBWAY VISITS

HOYT/SCHERMERHORN

I couldn't see any information about who made these panels or when at the subway stop itself. They didn't quite seem like an art mural, but I wasn't sure. After doing a little research I discovered that the "L" actually comes from Loeser's department store, which used to be located directly above. It had its own entrance, like Bloomingdales, and so the Art Deco decor remains. The store opened in 1897 and closed in 1952.  

JAY ST / METROTECH

This mural was completed in 2009 by Ben Snead. The neighborhood of downtown Brooklyn is undergoing a bit of revitalization, and Jay St is a fairly popular subway stop, meaning that it gets a decent amount of foot traffic. Also the architecture of the space creates a large walking area above the actual rail lines, which allows for more open wall space for the artwork to sit. To me, this piece and the year it was created speaks to the recent development of the area.

BOROUGH HALL

The first tablet reads "This tablet is erected to commemorate the opening of the first subway uniting the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn January 1908." The second lists the major organizations responsible for the event. This little plaque is quite an historical marker and immediately creates a sense of time when you see it. Above is a modern, bustling farmers market that actually might not have been too different from the time this plaque was erected. 

CLARK STREET

There is no information about the top two murals that are on the ground level of the Clark Street Stop. To be honest, I don't like them, but still they add a sense of character to the stop. Especially when compared to the Ray Ring piece below. Immediately you get a sense of history in this subway stop. Completed in 1987, perhaps this stop was more vibrant and active than it is today.