NEW YORK, NY.- This summer, MTA Arts & Design invites transit riders to encounter photography in fresh and unexpected ways through five exhibitions installed throughout the system. Featuring work by Pao Houa Her, Nina Katchadourian, Dakota Mace, Liz Nielsen, and Rob Stephenson, the exhibitions transform station passageways, concourses, and lightboxes into sites of discovery — where memory, imagination, and place quietly unfold in the midst of daily travel. Together, the installations offer riders vivid glimpses into personal histories and the layered narratives that comprise New York’s many communities. All exhibitions are on view through September 2026.
Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr 2 3 4 5 B D N Q R
Still, the land gives, the field grows, and the harvest enters, by Pao Houa Her
Pao Houa Her’s exhibition presents a lyrical selection of photographs shaped by the artist’s reflections on the Hmong diaspora and her family’s experience of migration. Through color and black-and-white images, she creates a nonlinear story of remembrance in which poppies appear as symbols of loss, resilience, and renewal, and where personal and inherited memories intermingle.
Displayed in the transfer passageway at Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr, the exhibition connects these themes to the broader experience of New York’s immigrant communities. The image selections reflect the tender ways in which connections to home are carried through treasured objects, shifting recollections, and imagined landscapes that continue to evolve across generations.
42 St-Bryant Park 7 B D F M
Fake Plants, by Nina Katchadourian
Selections from Nina Katchadourian’s ongoing Fake Plants series transform the 42 St-Bryant Park passageway into a whimsical encounter with the everyday. Originally crafted at home during the COVID-19 lockdown from whatever materials were on hand, these hybrid “botanical” sculptures — presented here as photographs — merge humor, improvisation, and memory.
Photographed against black backgrounds and scaled larger than life in the station lightboxes, the works reveal their humble origins (frozen spinach boxes, cardboard, N95 masks) upon closer inspection. The installation invites passersby to see familiar materials with fresh eyes and consider how creativity can emerge from the simplest surroundings.
Bowling Green 4 5
Indigenous Presence, by Dakota Mace
In her series Indigenous Presence, Dakota Mace draws on the Diné concept of ałk'idáá, a cyclical understanding of time in which past, present, and future continuously shape one another. Using experimental photographic processes that include pinhole photography, chemigrams, and cliché verre, she reconsiders how images hold memory and how land itself becomes an active storyteller.
Created in and around Bowling Green Park, once a council ground for Indigenous tribes and reportedly the location where Manhattan was sold to Dutch merchant and politician Peter Minuit in 1626, the works reveal traces of what persists beneath the city’s surface. Mace encourages viewers to recognize the interconnectedness of these stories and honor the grief, knowledge, and continuity carried by the land.
Grand Central Madison
Manifestations of the Voyage, by Liz Nielsen
In Liz Nielsen’s Manifestations of the Voyage, ten photograms — camera-less images made by exposing photosensitive paper to light — open a portal into shifting fields of color and geometry that echo the fleeting impressions experienced during travel. Created entirely in the darkroom, these works emerge from a process in which the artist layers materials over the paper and directs light through multiple exposures, creating compositions that balance intention with spontaneity.
Installed in alignment with the flow of passengers moving through Grand Central Madison, the works create an atmosphere shaped by changing light throughout the day. Twilight tones greet travelers headed toward Long Island in the evening, while brighter compositions meet those arriving to the city in the morning. Each image offers a moment of reflection within the commute and reimagines the familiar rhythm between departure and arrival.
Grand Central Terminal Dining Concourses
Along The Line: Bronx Neighborhoods, by Rob Stephenson
Rob Stephenson’s exhibition Along The Line: Bronx Neighborhoods presents 20 photographs made along Metro-North service areas in the Bronx, including Woodlawn, Marble Hill, Morris Heights, and Spuyten Duyvil. The images capture the borough’s mix of infrastructure, architectural history, and natural landscapes, focusing on subtle light, unexpected patterns, and the details that shape neighborhood life.
Rooted in the artist’s ongoing project documenting more than 300 New York neighborhoods, the series reflects Stephenson’s interest in the everyday character of place. The exhibition highlights his belief that every neighborhood holds something worth noticing and that even a small amount of local history can deepen the experience of moving through the city.
Pao Houa Her is a Hmong American artist whose practice engages primarily with legacies and potentials of landscape, portraiture, and documentary photographic traditions and aesthetics, creating works that examine identity, longing, and belonging in Hmong diasporic communities. Her’s solo exhibitions include, among others, The Imaginative Landscape at the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan WI and the San José Museum of Art in California (2024–2026), The Modern Window: Pao Houa Her at the Museum of Modern Art (2024-2025), Paj quam ntuj / Flowers of the Sky at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2022–2023), Emplotment at Or Gallery in Vancouver, Canada (2020), and My grandfather turned into a tiger at Midway Contemporary Art in Minneapolis (2018). Her’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University, Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and more. Her is the recipient of the Aperture Foundation’s Next Step Award (2023-24), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2023), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Grant (2022), a Light Work Artist Residency (2019), and the McKnight Visual Artists Fellowship (2022 and 2016). Born in Laos in 1982, Her was raised in Minnesota and is based in Blaine.
Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and public projects. Her video Accent Elimination was included at the 2015 Venice Biennale in the Armenian pavilion, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. From May 9 until November 22 2026, she is participating in the 61st International Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, curated by Koyo Kouoh and entitled In Minor Keys, with two works. In 2016 Katchadourian created Dust Gathering, an audio tour on the subject of dust, for MoMA’s program “Artists Experiment.” Major solo museum shows include the solo show at the Tang Museum, All Forms of Attraction, in 2006; the retrospective Curiouser, which opened in March 2017 at the Blanton Museum of Art and subsequently traveled; Uncommon Denominator, at The Morgan Library & Museum in 2023, and Origin Stories at the National Nordic Museum in 2025. Katchadourian has won grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the Nancy Graves Foundation. Katchadourian is Clinical Professor on the faculty of the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery and Pace Gallery and lives between Berlin and Brooklyn.
Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. Mace received her MA and MFA degrees in Photography and Textile Design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BFA in Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts. As a Diné (Navajo) artist, Mace draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring the themes of family lineage, community, and identity. In addition, her work pushes the viewer's understanding of Diné culture through alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking. Mace has also worked with numerous institutions and programs to develop dialogue on cultural appropriation and the importance of Indigenous design work. She is an MFA in Studio Arts Faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the photographer for the Helen Louise Allen Textile Center and the Center of Design and Material Culture. Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, Forge Project Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, Everson Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography among other public collections.
Liz Nielsen is a New York-based artist celebrated for her innovative approach to photography, which she refers to as "light painting." Using photograms—a technique that predates traditional photography—Nielsen creates one-of-a-kind compositions in the darkroom. Her process involves a complex layering system of materials and objects to project light onto photosensitive paper, building intricate, multi-exposure images that combine detailed planning with moments of spontaneity. Her vibrant photograms, ranging in size from intimate to monumental, feature bold colors and geometric forms, evoking themes of duality, movement, and transformation. Speaking about her medium, Nielsen has said, "Light is like love—you can know it, but you can’t hold it," a sentiment that resonates deeply in her practice. Her work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York, Black Box Projects in London, SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, and Hexton Gallery in Aspen. Nielsen’s work has been featured in major publications, including Artforum, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. Additionally, Nielsen is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Grant, and the Chicago Academic Achievement Program (CAAP) Grant.
Rob Stephenson is a fine art and architectural photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been exhibited at venues including the Brooklyn Museum, the Center for Architecture, and the Museum of the City of New York, and is held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of the City of New York. Solo exhibitions include The Neighborhoods (Future Fair, New York, 2025), From Roof to Table (Pulp Gallery, Vancouver, 2019), and Authenticity and Innovation (Center for Architecture, New York, 2016). Stephenson has received fellowships from the Design Trust for Public Space, the Camera Club of New York, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was awarded the 2025 O'Shaughnessy Ventures Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, T Magazine, and Businessweek. He is the author of Myths of the Near Future (Aint-Bad, 2019), documenting Florida's Space Coast in the post-Shuttle era, and From Roof to Table (2012), a survey of New York City's urban agriculture movement.
