Program to bring beauty to commute

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority plans to revive a program that aims to improve the aesthetic value of Boston’s T stations.

The MBTA Art Program contracted a local artist to design a $90,000 stained glass display using funding from a $1.2 million federal grant for public arts.

The program will also use the federal money to fix water damage and clean graffiti on existing pieces in MBTA stations. Over a five-year span, the program hopes to acquire new pieces for 10 new or renovated T stations by the end of 2003.

“It’s important not only to me as a rider, but the T’s philosophy is that when you enhance the T, more people will ride,” said Joseph White, manager of the MBTA Art Program. “The collection right now is in really good shape.”

The first station to receive a facelift will be the Airport station in East Boston. Work there is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2002. The station will contain a stained glass window display designed by Cambridge artist Linda Lichtman.

The program’s revival marks a departure from the way the MBTA acquired art in the past. Instead of hiring outside art consultants, the MBTA created its own art committee made up of two community-elected members, an MBTA representative and artists and critics from various disciplines who voted on the art submissions.

“The community’s benefit is different in the way that the program is run now,” White said. “The community never had a voice in the process.”

With White as the new manager, this in-house program received more than 650 submissions from artists from as close as Boston itself and from as far away as Taiwan. The committee narrowed the competition down to five finalists and contracted Lichtman to design the display after viewing those artists’ station-specific proposals last September.

The money used to fund the Art Program does not take away from funding allocated to improving T service, White said. If these enhancement funds were not used for the art program, they would be used for another project to improve the appearance of the T, not the service.

The original program began in the late 1970s and 1980s when the MTBA received federal funding for the creation of public art in the newly built Orange and Red line T stations, becoming the first public art display of its kind in the United States.

“At the time, it was an innovative project,” said Ricardo Barretto, director of the UrbanArts Institute at the Massachusetts College of Art. “It has served as a model for many places after that.”

The UrbanArts Institute helped to commission artists to design pieces for the Cambridge stations, he said.

Since the introduction of the first art program, the MBTA’s use of enhancement funds has been expanded to include the expenditures such as additional bike racks, signs and shrubs. As a result, the Art Program has had to compete for art restoration and acquisition funding. Poor upkeep and restorations led to the eventual deterioration of these projects.

The process of acquiring new art slowed down as the construction of new T stations also trailed off in the early 1990s.

The MBTA’s current art collection comprises more than 70 pieces ranging from granite monuments to murals located in and around stations on all four T lines and on the Commuter Rail.

Such pieces include Gyorgy Kepes’ stained glass wall in Harvard Square Station’s bus area called the “Blue Sky on the Red Line” and Susumu Shingu’s 46-foot kinetic windmill sculpture called the “Gift of the Wind” in the Porter Square Station plaza.

The project gives community members the opportunity to learn about the history of public arts in Boston, Barretto said.

While various local communities have been supportive of public arts, there is no coherent policy on establishing or allocating funds to urban art projects, he said.

“Public art provides a design opportunity to the environment we live in,” said Barretto. “I am delighted that the MBTA has committed funds [to the program] and that the community will be involved in the process.”