The Washington Post Magazine piece this weekend on the Moscow subway got DCist thinking. Where is all the public art in WMATA’s metrorail system? In Moscow, the system has chandeliers, mosaics, stained glass and marble-clad platforms. Of course many of these pieces glorify the height of Soviet communism, but if Stalin could have created such an artistic system, couldn’t Lyndon Johnson have mandated some sort of artistic glorification of American democracy in “America’s Subway?”
So besides the concrete barrel vaulted station tubes, where is the art? WMATA has a website featuring the public art is does have. One of DCist’s favorites is “Ocean Piece” at the Archives-Navy Memorial station (pictured here), which has two poems, Walt Whitman’s “Prayer of Columbus” and Fernando Pessoa’s “Occident.”
Clicking on the map, you’ll see that most of the artwork is located in newer stations on the Green Line.
