On January 25, when the first commuter trains pulled into Grand Central Madison, the new $11.1 billion addition to Grand Central Terminal, New Yorkers finally got a first look at the long-awaited upgrade in the Long Island Rail Road. It was hard not to notice a misspelling of artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s name, or to avoid NYC’s steepest escalator rides. A big win, however, are its moving works of art.
While several large-scale mosaics created by artists Yayoi Kusama and Kiki Smith are the big draws to the station, other installations, including video works, animations and 3D imagery, as well as a rotating selection of photography by other artists and collections will supply additional oomph.
In The Sound, Smith deftly uses mosaic to depict sunlight glinting on water and a series of summer showers sweeping across the Long Island Sound. Smith worked closely with Franz
Mayer of Munich, a glass and mosaic maker since 1847, with whom she’d created a stained-glass window for New York City’s Eldridge Street Synagogue.
Along the new station’s Madison Concourse, Yayoi Kusama’s mosaic draws on motifs she previously used in her My Eternal Soul series—vivid colors explode in a buoyant and energetic landscape of squiggles, dots, flowers and smiling faces. Titled A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe, the glass mosaic stretches 120 feet. Smith’s mosaics, five in all, strike a more contemplative chord: In the largest work, an 80-foot panel, angular shards of reflective blue glass tiles become shards of sunlight hitting the East River, glinting and full of motion.
The other Smith mosaics, framed within the Concourse’s architectural alcoves, also look to nature for inspiration. Each of the four alcove works depict an aspect of Long Island wildlife: a still and alert deer, a flock of wild turkeys standing amid wooded undergrowth, a summery and almost pointillist Long Island Sound seascape, and an abstracted and angular wave receding on a rocky beach.
Four of Kiki Smith’s five mosaics were created for alcove spaces in the new station extension,
and provide a kind of window between the city and Long Island’s natural beauty.
The selection and installation of public art in the Madison Concourse is the biggest and latest project overseen by the MTA Arts & Design group. The group, under its director, Sandra Bloodworth, is also responsible for the Poetry in Motion subway series (created in partnership with the Poetry Society of America) and Music Under New York performances, as well as other cultural initiatives.
“When art creates an intimate experience while you’re in a public realm—that’s when it’s successful. That’s the goal to attain.”
—Sandra Bloodworth, director of the MTA Arts & Design group
Since it was founded in 1985, the MTA Arts & Design has chosen some stunning artwork to display in stations along New York’s almost 250-mile subway system. Mosaic works by artists like Faith Ringgold (125th St Station), Sol LeWitt (59th Street ColumbusCircle), Elizabeth Murray (East 59th St Station), Nancy Spero (Lincoln Center), and EricFischl (34th St/Penn Station) enliven the walls of stations. Ceramic mosaic, Bloodworth says, is the material of choice for its durability: “It’ll be there forever if man or nature doesn’t intervene.”
Splashy recent projects curated by MTA Arts & Design have included the Second Avenue subway extension where the walls of the four new stations are enhanced with artwork by the likes of Chuck Close, Sarah Sze, and Vic Muniz. The stations along the extension drew crowds of riders and art lovers on opening day, January 1, 2017.
Yayoi Kusama’s whimsical imagery swirls and dances down the corridor between the train platforms and the city above, providing energetic and happy companionship for the commuter’s journey.
In 2021, artists Nick Cave transformed a connector tunnel between Times Square and Grand Central with two-dimensional mosaic versions of his exuberant “Sound Suit” sculptures. Each One, Every One, Equal All, Cave’s three-part work—full of rollicking figures and color—stretches across 4,600 square feet of hallway, providing a visually jangly accompaniment to passengers as they walk the long hallway between subway platforms.
In addition to the stations within New York City, MTA Arts & Design also selects the artwork for stations along Metro North and the Long Island Railroad. When the suburban rail stations undergo renovations and upgrades, roughly one percent of the total budget is set aside to commission and install original art. MTA Arts & Design puts out a call for artists to submit their vision for the station in question. Then the group convenes a panel made up of community members, arts professionals, and the station’s architect to consider the submissions and make a final selection, choosing one that best suits the space.
The long and thoughtful process works, Bloodworth says, and results in stations that appeal to local commuters and some that draw culture-seeking visitors. “The artworks—each one geared to that place and to the people that use that place—become so special to their community. Each one is so unique and so right.”
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