Description

Without even having to swipe your MetroCard you can experience New York’s four-year-old, $4.5 billion art museum with this virtual Second Avenue Subway Art tour. Learn the history and stories behind the art, artists and stations, from portraits of Lou Reed to vintage photos of New York’s since demolished “El Train” and the New Yorkers who rode them, you’ll explore the best of this unique art museum.

The Second Avenue subway has been many years in the making. The MTA Arts & Design public arts program took this opportunity to design three new subway stations and renovate another, commissioning four artists to create projects that would liven up the stations for the extended Q line. Some artists included self-portraits. Do you know which ones? A couple holding hands is truly groundbreaking. Why is that? Each station displays the mottos of two political entities. Which ones are they?

Within the 96th Street stop, you can get caught up in the environmental “Blueprint for a Landscape.” It lines the walls of the mezzanine and stairwells using 4,300 striking blue porcelain tiles. Sarah Sze, who represented the United States at 2013’s Venice Biennale (a biannual art exhibition), is the artist.

At 86th Street, Chuck Close has created 12 nine-foot-high portraits of artists Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker, musicians Lou Reed and Philip Glass, and others for “Subway Portraits.”

For the 72nd Street station stop, Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Vik Muniz designed three dozen full-length glass mosaic portraits of real New Yorkers titled “Perfect Strangers,” including a mother with toddler and stroller and a sari-wearing woman checking her mobile phone. On this virtual tour find yourself only one degree of separation from one of the subjects. Which one? Take the tour; know more!

At the 63rd Street stop vintage photos of New York’s elevated train lines, the New Yorkers who rode them, and the demise of the “el” were used by artist Jean Shin to create the installation titled “Elevated.” The art spans three levels and uses three different media: laminated glass, ceramic mosaic, and ceramic tile.