Sunlight is not usually associated with the sloppy basement mood that envelops commuters through Penn Station.
But natural light wastes through the new Moynihan Train Hall through its massive 92-foot skylight ceiling and illuminates another surprise: permanent installations by some of the world’s most famous artists.
Kehinde Wiley, Stan Douglas and artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset have important pieces on display prominently in the new $ 1.6 billion train station that opens Friday, offering an expansion of the Penn Station venue and customers of Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road served. The hall, designed by the architectural firm SOM, can also be connected to the metro, although it is a short distance away.
The 255,000-square-foot train hall is housed in the James A. Farley Post Office building, the grand Beaux-Arts structure designed by McKim Mead & White in 1912, two years after the original Pennsylvania station. (New Yorkers may know that the Farley Building is in full swing to file taxes before midnight in mid-April.)
The new hall was named after Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, who first set up plans for a renovation in the early 1990s, but they were caught in delays for years. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the driving force behind the project, announced in 2016 a public-private partnership for the development of the hall, including Empire State Development, Vornado Realty Trust, Related Companies, Skanska and others.
The Moynihan train hall serves as a redemption for the doomed Penn station, which was demolished in 1963 in an act so disgraceful to the historic buildings in the city that the burgeoning national conservation movement began.
The new hall fails to solve many of New York’s myriad transportation problems – congestion on the tracks, the need for a new tunnel under the Hudson River, the rust of the existing Penn Station, to name a few . According to officials, it is a necessary step to complete other transportation projects, add more train capacity and relieve the crowd at Penn Station.
The train hall opens at a time when citizens are being asked to refrain from unnecessary travel to limit the spread of the coronavirus, and at a time when the train traffic of commuters is very low.
But the governor pointed to the achievement of delivering a major infrastructure project on time, despite a pandemic, as well as one that would transcend the Covid-19 era. Mr. Cuomo calls the new hall ‘very hopeful’.
“It speaks of the brighter days ahead when we will be able to get together, get past each other and share the same space free from fear,” he said. Cuomo said. “It promises renewal and rebirth of civic life in New York, and indicates the opportunity that lies ahead.”
The completion of the project – a station intended to welcome commuters and the rest of the world to New York – serves as a bright spot at the end of a dark year for New York, where deaths due to a global pandemic rose in the spring. again the boom, and numerous beloved restaurants and shops closed when the virus plagued the local economy.
On a recent tour of the train hall, masked workers were putting the final touches on blue curved benches in a walnut seat in the waiting area with tickets. The radiant floor of the hall feels warm to the touch and is clean at least for now. Majestic canopies and arched skylights nod to the elegant traceries in the original Penn Station venue. The hall offers free Wi-Fi and a lounge for nursing mothers. A 12-foot clock with a font designed for road and rail nameplates serves as a reminder of the clock in the demolished Penn station. Intended as a meeting point, it hangs 25 feet above the floor.
Construction of the new hall began in 2017 with careful repairs to the 200,000-square-foot stone facade, 700 windows, copper roof, steel bowls, and terracotta cornices. Some of the 120,000 square feet of retail, dining and retail space will not be ready right away. The train hall does not take up all the space in the building; the post office will still work. Facebook is moving in as the main commercial tenant.
While the new hall pales in comparison to the majesty of the main hall of the Grand Central Terminal, it will be a much more pleasant welcome for commuters than the Penn Station, referred to as ‘the La Guardia of train stations’. ”
The addition of work by well-known artists adds a festive atmosphere, a sense of pride in the public sphere and a method that Mr. Cuomo prioritized at four stations along the Second Avenue subway line at similar transportation points (with pieces by Chuck Close, Jean Shin, Vik Muniz and Sarah Sze) and a new Terminal B at La Guardia Airport with installations by Ms. Sze, Laura Owens, Sabine Hornig and Jeppe Hein.
“There’s something to be said about a society that gathers around an artist, around his or her vision, to say it’s something we collectively believe in,” he said. Wiley said, especially known for his portrait of former President Barack Obama, which hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. “New York needs it now.”
It seems that the space is meant to keep commuters always looking upwards, from its expansive skylight to two large ceiling installations on each entrance road – mr. Wiley’s stained glass paintings of break dancers in 33rd Street and Elmgreen & Dragset’s “The Hive”, a group of upside-down models of futuristic skyscrapers, in 31st Street.
“This is an opportunity for artists to stretch themselves and do something new and different,” said Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund, which oversaw the art project.
The artists submitted their proposals in 2019 before one of them envisioned Covid-19 spreading around the world, and then exporting their pieces from afar.
Here’s a first look at the artists and their installations.
Kehinde Wiley
Mr. Wiley’s background, hand-painted, stained glass triangular called ‘Go’, across the ceiling of the 33rd Street entrance, depicts dancers wearing a sneaker-clad breakwater that apparently floats over a blue sky.
The artist, whose paintings often represent well-known works with black subjects, said he wanted to embrace the scarcity of contemporary art on stained glass, as well as ‘play with the language of ceiling frescoes’ by using his installation to celebrate black culture .
“So much of what’s going on in ceiling frescoes is people expressing a kind of vitality and religious devotion and rise,” he said. Wiley, who has a studio in New York but spent much of the year in his studio in Dakar, Senegal. “For me, the movement and space made so much more sense to think of ways bodies turn into break dancing.”
One woman is wearing a bag of yellow pants and a crop top; another was fitted in a denim jacket. Instead of angels and gods in classical frescoes, Mr. offers. Wiley Nike logos and pigeons in mid-flight. The outstretched finger of a young woman in camouflage trousers evokes images of ‘The Creation of Adam’ by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
“It’s this idea to express absolute joy – break dancing in the air,” he said, noting that break dancing began in New York City.
Mr. Wiley toured the train hall and took note of decorative blossoms and metalwork. The shape around the three panels is designed to coordinate with the metal around windows outside the building.
Mr. Wiley said he deviated from his usual method of ‘street casting’, or of choosing strangers from the street as models, because he was temporarily pressured to deliver the work, rather focusing on the subjects of previous paintings.
“The aesthetics of black culture are the aesthetics of survival, vitality and importance and the ability to float in the midst of so much,” he said. Wiley said, adding that he hopes the work will make commuters stop and smile.
“And I hope they recognize themselves,” he said. “At the intersection of trade, commerce and transportation in the capital of the world economy, I wanted to create something that is proof of the black possibility.”
Stan Douglas
Giant photographic panels of mr. Douglas, a Canadian whose work reflects historical moments of tension that connect local history with broader social movements, serves as the backdrop along a more than 80-meter-long wall of a waiting area for ticket passengers. The series, ‘Penn Station’s Half Century’, is a tribute to the original Penn Station, starring Mr. Douglas doing archival research to recreate nine small but striking moments that took place there.
Mr. Douglas, who will represent Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2022, invited 400 people – 100 every day from the shooting – to an empty hockey arena in Vancouver, where they were dressed in antique costumes and spaced apart. He put together numerous images on the digitally recreated interiors of the demolished station, based on old floor plans and photographs.
The panels feature a depiction of the outlaw and folk hero Celia Cooney, also known as the ‘Bobbed Hair Bandit’, who met crowds in 1924 when she returned to New York to face charges. Mr. Douglas also re-introduces Penn Station as the soundtrack for director Vincente Minnelli’s 1945 film “The Clock,” starring Judy Garland.
One joyful image recreates a very New York moment: a spontaneous performance by vaudeville artists in the hall after a major snowstorm stranded them and other travelers in 1914. It was led by Bert Williams, a black singer and comedian who also created a groundbreaking musical. theater productions.
“It’s a complete fantasy – we do not know what it looked like,” he said. Douglas said about the scene he created. “We found out who did shows on the Eastern Seaboard and recorded it. We found acrobatic groups from the era and reference images for costumes and their actions. ”
The pandemic affected Mr. Douglas threw a crumb ball.
Each model was masked until the moment before the hatch clicked. And all were filmed separately, even for large crowd scenes, and then the images were layered on top of each other.
One person did die, Mr. Douglas said, but to everyone’s relief, Covid-19 was not involved. “She was wearing winter clothes inside on a July day,” he said.
Elmgreen & Dragset
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, artists from Berlin whose work explores the relationship between art, architecture and design, created ‘The Hive’, a set of skyscrapers of up to nine-foot-tall models hanging upside down like stalactites from the ceiling at the 31st street entrance.
The polished, white buildings, some replicas and some purely fictional, look futuristic with their perfect edges and small lights. A mirrored base allows commuters to be projected into the cityscape and creates a kind of aerial reflection of an imaginary city, the artists explained.
“This is an important aspect of people reflecting themselves in the base plate,” he said. Dragset said. “We like that there is an interaction between the audience and the work itself.”
Mr. Dragset said the work was called ‘The Hive’ to reflect how cities, with their wealth of diversity, function because people accept certain rules for living together.
“It’s about a great collaboration to make everyone survive,” he said.
The installation contains nearly 100 buildings, most of them aluminum, which the artists hoped would give their commuters a new experience every time.
“People are in a great hurry when they go to the train,” he said. Elmgreen said. “We thought of making something that would make sense to you in one view, but if you want a complete experience, you can stop and look up and discover new aspects of the artwork over and over again.”
The exhibition contains 72,000 LED lights; six buildings can change color.
The artists said the work from Germany to New York, where it was produced, was nerve-wracking. Together, the buildings weigh more than 30,000 pounds. Mr. Dragset was the only artist among the four who could travel to New York this month to oversee the installation.
“I saw it come up and come together and was there for this magical moment of the lights going on,” he said. “Me and my product manager, we shed a little tear.”