Art Works: An Inside Look at Creating, Curating, and Conserving Public Art

Explore the art collections of MTA Arts & Design, NYC Health + Hospitals, and the Public Housing Community Fund.

Art is all around us in New York City—not just in the city’s wealth of museums, parks, and plazas but throughout the transit system and public space and buildings. A subway journey can take you past works by contemporary luminaries like Roy Lichtenstein, Sol LeWitt, and Alex Katz; works by Keith Haring, Helen Frankenthaler, and Andy Warhol decorate hospital corridors; murals by Philip Guston and Costantino Nivola appear alongside paintings by young artists who reside in the NYCHA campuses they adorn. Art makes our public spaces more beautiful and joyful and has been proven to improve health outcomes, reduce stress, and provide an important avenue of connection between institutions and the diverse communities they serve.

Open House New York invites you to an illustrated talk with Sandra Bloodworth, Director of Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design, Larissa W. Trinder, Assistant Vice President for Arts in Medicine at New York City Health + Hospitals, and Alex Zablocki, Executive Director for the Public Housing Community Fund about curating, commissioning, and caring for the city’s largest municipal art collections. The talk is moderated by Daphne Lundi and begins with opening remarks by Tracey Knuckles of Bloomberg Associates.

From rarely-seen masterpieces to emerging local artists creating exciting new works, this program will open a new way of viewing and exploring our city and the impact of public art.

Attendees will receive a copy of the book Healing Walls (2022), documenting NYC Health + Hospitals’ Community Mural Project and including essays and archival photos showcasing the history of hospital murals in New York. All proceeds from the event will go to the Public Housing Community Fund.

This program is produced in partnership with Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app. Download Bloomberg Connects to access free guides to the art collections of MTA Arts & Design, NYC Health + Hospitals, and the Public Housing Community Fund, as well as numerous sites in NYC and around the world.