纽约的地下艺术博物馆
Millions of New Yorkers and visitors ride the city’s subway and other trains each day. The public transportation system offers more than just a trip, however. It also has one of the most extensive public art collections in the world, with much of it under city streets. Some people call it New York’s “underground art museum.” It includes more than 250 works of art. They are meant to brighten everyone’s ride around the city.
Sandra Bloodworth has directed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s arts program since it began in 1985. “But actually, it really began much earlier,” she said. “When the subway was founded in 1904, a percentage, if you will, of money was set aside to create a special decoration within the system, in order to make the place this very special place that people would want to use.”
For the past 30 years, artists have been asked to make works that relate to city life or to the neighborhood around a train station. There are coastal scenes at stations near the Atlantic Ocean. Native plants and flowers can be found in a garden scene in Brooklyn. Wildlife mosaics greet visitors arriving at the subway station next to the American Museum of Natural History. Sculptor Tom Otterness created the small, rounded, metal creatures that populate another station.
“When I’m stressed, I look at the subway art. I love the colors. Where I live, they have a mosaic of a man and a woman, like, floating across the water, and it’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful to have art everywhere.” Alejandra Acosta is from Colombia. She stopped at Times Square to take a picture of a colorful glass wall painting by the former artist Jacob Lawrence. “I think it’s nice when you see these kinds of things that catch your eye when you’re walking in spaces like the subway stations that seem a little bit dull. They don’t have a lot of decoration.”
Even on cloudy winter days, the piece brings life into the dark passages. The same could be said, in fact, about all the works in New York’s underground art museum.