Along the D Line, Brooklyn Train Stations Are Platforms for Art

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For a picturesque ride, few railroads in New York rival Amtrak’s Empire line along the Hudson River.

The West End line on the D train, between Sunset Park and Coney Island in Brooklyn, would not seem to be among them.

What it lacks in scenery, however, it makes up in art. Twelve of the 14 stations between 36th Street and the Stillwell Avenue terminus now offer some kind of visual delight: mosaic proletarians, cast-bronze bees and a 20-foot-long translucent hot dog. (You’ll never guess where.)

The works were commissioned by the Arts and Design program of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is typically allotted 0.5 to 1 percent of a rehabilitation budget for subway and commuter rail stations.

After an $88 million refurbishing of seven stations on the West End line, completed in 2012, D trains in southwestern Brooklyn travel through one of the greatest concentrations of public artwork in the subway system.

“I really, really liked the idea that they would be seen by people who do not or cannot frequent art galleries and museums, or who can’t afford to buy an expensive piece of art,” said the artist Portia Munson, whose brilliant floral mandalas have transformed the Fort Hamilton Parkway station.

The Arts and Design program has earned the right to call itself a museum, but it’s a museum in which one gallery can be 15 minutes away from the next. On the West End line, by contrast, you can hop on and off the train, covering a lot of artistic ground in not much time.

And this is a good moment to take stock of Arts and Design (known until recently as Arts for Transit), as it approaches its 30th anniversary.

For one thing, the largest single artwork ever commissioned under the program, “Sky Reflector-Net,” by James Carpenter Design Associates, Grimshaw Architects and Arup, is to go on view this fall when the new Fulton Center opens in Lower Manhattan.

The net — a 79-foot-high tapering, truncated cone of reflective aluminum diamonds set in a stainless-steel tracery — also appears on the cover of “New York’s Underground Art Museum: M.T.A. Arts and Design,” by Sandra Bloodworth and William Ayres, which is to be published this month. The catalog updates “Along the Way: M.T.A. Arts for Transit,” from 2006, with many new projects.

Arts and Design has also reached the point of being established firmly enough to provoke a parody. Last month, three illicit sculptures were added to the “Life Underground” groupings by Tom Otterness in the 14th Street station of the Eighth Avenue line. They imitated his style, a blend of whimsy and biting commentary on corruption and greed.

The figures showed a man pointing a gun at a dog, and a distant bystander. A freelance creative director who took credit for the installation, Andrew Tider, said the reference was to Mr. Otterness having made a film in the 1970s in which he shot a dog. Mr. Tider said Mr. Otterness should have included himself in the “Life Underground” tableaux. (Mr. Otterness had apologized years earlier for what he called an “indefensible act.”)

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