PHOTOS: Midtown Subway Exhibit Pays Tribute To MTA Design Style

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Most New Yorkers riding the subway don't realize that the maps used to navigate stations and transfers are considered museum-quality art. That's why curators from MoMA worked with the MTA to create a new art installation at the station closest to the Midtown art museum

The MTA Graphics Standard Manual dates back to the 1960s after the unification of the subway system under the former New York City Transit Authority (now known as NYC Transit). Right from the beginning, the MTA collaborated with MoMA to ensure that graphic design used in the system was both helpful to riders and aesthetically pleasing.

When the Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street station — located across the street from MoMA — was in need of a design update, the MTA knew that an exhibit tracing the history of the subway system's design would be a perfect fit, MTA Arts & Design Director Sandra Bloodworth said Thursday.

"We had the chance, it was an opportunity to do something new something about this place and something that connected us to MoMA," Bloodworth said. "And what that was are elements, elements that are about our system, design elements that are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art."

MoMA curator Mildred Constantine played a huge role in the creation of the MTA's graphic design standards in the 60s when transit chief Daniel Scannell approached the museum to solicit advice on hiring a design firm to create a subway map. It was Constantine who suggested the firm Unimark International, which employed designer Massimo Vignelli. The Italian-born designer eventually drew up the beloved modernist-style map now known as the Vignelli subway map.

The map was so highly regarded in the world of graphic design that the new graphic design standards were eventually incorporated into MoMA's permanent collection. Works in the collection were reproduced into a 71-panel exhibit on display indefinitely on the southbound platform of the Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street station. Panels are organized to make sense to subway riders beginning on either end of the platform, MoMA curator Juliet Kinchin said Thursday.

Panels depict blown-up versions of Vignelli's map, the different typefaces used by the MTA, snippets from the graphics standards manual and quotes by Vignelli and design collaborators Bob Noorda and Joan Charysyn.

Kinchin said Thursday that showcasing the development of the subway system's graphic design through the years at the station will help cement MoMA's longstanding relationship with the MTA.

"It also speaks so strongly to the way design, good design can enhance and inspire and ease our interactions on a day-to-day basis," Kinchin said.

Check out more photos of the station exhibit below: