By Dilshanie Perera

New York City’s largest art gallery is below street level. It boasts commissioned work by artists as varied as Roy Lichtenstein, Romare Bearden, Maya Lin, Sol LeWitt and countless other contemporary sculptors, designers, and multimedia specialists. The space housing the collection isn’t a secret extension of the Met or a new gallery in Chelsea. It’s the city’s transit system.

If you’ve ever been inside a subway station, ridden on the Metro North or Long Island Railroad (LIRR), or driven into the city via the bridges and tunnels, then you’ve certainly seen some of these artworks. They are part of Arts for Transit, a program sponsored by New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Think of the tile mosaic just below the A, C, and E platforms at Penn Station. The scene is rendered in mostly golds, reds, and browns with animals and people led by a ringmaster, arms raised and bathed in light. It piques the imagination. A bear standing casually on two legs is clad in a red dress and boots. She stares quizzically back at the viewer. This 2001 piece is called “The Garden of Circus Delights” and is by artist Eric Fischl. The image is simultaneously sinister and redemptive, and Fischl has described it as a “contemporary Dante’s Inferno” allegorically “turning commuting into a spiritual quest.”

You don’t have to leave Penn Station to find more art. As you walk from the A, C, E platform across the station toward the LIRR main concourse and 1, 2, 3 entrance, look up. Maya Lin’s sculpture “Eclipsed Time” is installed permanently in the ceiling. Known for designing the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, Lin created this moveable alternative clock for the MTA in 1994. It is made of glass, aluminum, steel, and fiber optics.

Launched in 1985 as part of a then-ongoing overhaul of the transportation systems in the five boroughs, Arts for Transit was aimed at integrating good design within the commuting landscape. In the early 1980s, the MTA announced that subway and rail stations were in need of facade and structural renovation. Promoting artwork, while making the necessary improvements, was a logical next step.

Now there are over 250 permanently-installed works in the subway system alone, and the collection continues to grow. Each piece is sourced either by commission or open-call submissions. In the latter case, artists respond to a query by the MTA and a juried panel selects a few from that group to propose a site-specific construction after consulting with community members and visiting the space. The panel then chooses the final artwork to be installed.

Commissions usually involve asking an established artist to create a work for a specific station. Frequently, the materials they must use in such major thoroughfares are different from those with which they typically work. Known for his wall-sized color-block acrylic paintings, Minimalist Conceptual artist Sol LeWitt received an inquiry in 2004 to design a permanent work for the Arts for Transit collection at the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station.

Paint was out of the question for such a highly trafficked station since it would wear way too easily. LeWitt instead chose porcelain tiles for the installation, a medium he had never previously worked with. He had very specific colors and shapes in mind for the tiles, so his crew and the MTA grew concerned when they couldn’t find tilemakers in the U.S. who could match the bright saturated hues LeWitt wanted. Finally, LeWitt’s team located ceramicists in Madrid who were up to the challenge. “Whirls and Twirls (MTA)” was unveiled to the public in 2009. One of LeWitt’s last commissions, before his death in 2007, the work can’t be missed. It measures 53 feet by 11 feet and brings together 250 tiles in LeWitt’s signature colors.

The northernmost station on the number 6 subway line is the Westchester Square elevated platform. It also contains a commissioned work outside the artist’s normal purview. Romare Bearden’s “City of Light” was installed here in 1993 and involved a close collaboration between Bearden and the glass artists Benoit Gilsoul and Helmut Schardt. What was to become a startling triptych in stained glass began as one of Bearden’s signature collages showcasing city life in New York. Gilsoul and Schardt used glass and epoxy to match Bearden’s bold line and form. The result is an image that appears to be in motion, and sparkles with energy.

Bill Brand’s “Masstransiscope” is another artwork that feigns movement, though this time the viewer has to be in a subway car on the B or Q lines traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Just before getting to the Manhattan Bridge if you look through the windows to your right, you’ll see an animation of colors and shapes coming together and a rocket ship taking flight. It is unexpected and magical. “Masstransiscope” works like a zoetrope, with 228 still images illuminated by fluorescent lights and encased in a frame with over 200 vertical slits cut into it. As the subway moves, the images jump and dance.

Brand’s subway animation actually predates the Arts for Transit program. Installed in 1980 with a grant from a nonprofit organization and approval from the MTA, the Masstransiscope was a hidden gem, before Brooklyn became a site for artistic pilgrimage in its own right. In recent years, the work has seen a few restorations. In 2008 Brand cleaned and repainted the work, and did so again this year. When the city subways were shut down in preparation for Hurricane Sandy, vandals broke into the tunnel and spray painted over the Masstransiscope. It has since been restored to its former luster and secured to prevent future defacement.

If all of this feels like a bit of a scavenger hunt, it certainly can be. You can find more information about artists and artworks featured throughout the transit system using the Arts For Transit app, which can be downloaded onto your smartphone at mta.info/art/app. And if analog is more your speed, you can reference Arts for Transit Director Sandra Bloodworth’s new book, written in collaboration with William Ayers: Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit (Moncelli Press, 2006).

The Arts for Transit program extends into the literary arts as well. As you ride the subway, you can find a curated poetry collection on posters inside the trains, as well as on the reverse of some Metrocards. They include texts by Billy Collins, Mary Ruefle, Kevin Young, and others. Commissioned drawings inside subway cars, usually situated above the windows, provide even more to look as part of the MTA’s Poster Program. Up to six artists are invited each year to design an original work for display in unused advertising space throughout the system’s train cars and 468 stations.

This is museum-quality work in the most public of public places. It gives you the chance to see something extraordinary while going about something pedestrian, like a commute. And it makes mass transit a friendlier experience. Being sandwiched between strangers during rush hour is a bit more manageable with visions of Roy Lichtenstein’s “Times Square Mural” dancing in your head. To see it, head over to the mezzanine at 42nd Street.