Launched in late 2023, the vacant retail activation program aims to fill vacant retail units in the subway system with creative non-traditional uses, such as art installations or cultural programming that can make currently underutilized spaces more vibrant. As demand for retail space has evolved in recent years, these units have experienced vacancy because their size limitations, shape, or location, make them challenging for revenue-generating businesses to utilize them for traditional retail. The vacant unit program is intended to encourage visually appealing and engaging uses to make stations more welcoming and whimsical spaces for riders.
If you are a nonprofit, community, or arts organization and would be interested in operating a unit, reach out to mtare@mtahq.org.
Please note: The Vacant Retail Unit opportunity is an MTA Real Estate initiative. Artists and organizations working within the vacant retail units do so by license with the MTA. MTA Arts & Design has an advisory role in this initiative. Vacant Retail Unit programming is not managed by MTA Arts & Design and installations within these spaces are not part of the MTA Arts & Design program.
Current exhibitions and partners
ChaShaMa
Founded in 1995, ChaShaMa transforms vacant properties throughout New York into creative venues. Each year, ChaShaMa gives $13 million worth of space grants to minority and women owned small businesses, artist work and show space, and free arts education in under-resourced communities.
As of 2023, ChaShaMa has given space to over 50,000 creators, hosted 6,000 public art events, provided 3,500 free art classes for the underserved, and reached upwards of 12 million audience members.
ChaShaMa uplifts underserved, diverse communities to cultivate a new generation of creative leaders, and continues to fill empty spaces with commerce, beauty, and connection; serving as a catalyst for a more vibrant future.
50 St
- Artwork Name: Safe Space
- Artist Name: Traci Johnson
- About the Work: What would a world look like absent from injury? A space free from judgment, an escape that nourishes the mind. Perhaps think of the starting point of time when life gave us glimpses of beginnings and the pureness of comfort. How does it feel to create that, what does that look like? How do we heal from ourselves, our past, and the world? It resembles being cradled, how a baby is wrapped, and protected in the womb, how do we nurse ourselves back to comfort? It’s the infinite amount of colors and boundary-less shapes of imagination. A world without trauma is all the possibilities of what brought you joy as a child. As humans, we associate different forms with comfortability, The power of imagination and knowledge is gifted to us all, but due to societal pressures, we have forgotten this. As we return to our true selves, a metamorphosis is necessary in order to heal. As we let go of old ways we usher in a new phase of ourselves, unapologetically, we give light to our true selves. A sort of revelation into salvation.
- About the Artist: Brooklyn-born artist Traci Johnson delves into the complexities of femininity through a captivating blend of textile design, installation, and sculpture. A distinguished Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, Traci’s artistic foundation fuels their exploration of self-discovery within societal expectations placed on women. Their work transcends the limitations of traditional art, gracing the walls of prestigious galleries including Canada, Cierra Britton, Morgan Lehman, and the Museum at FIT. Beyond the binary, their art celebrates the future where embracing all aspects of identity leads to a more genuine self. Abstract patterns, vibrant hues, and unconventional shapes have become tools for Traci to subvert societal structures built around the feminine form. Their work fosters a safe space for emotional exploration, encouraging viewers to explore a freer authenticity beneath idealized versions of womanhood.
63 Dr-Rego Park
- Artwork Name: Glory
- Artist Name: Vanessa Powers
- Medium: Oil on canvas, printed on vinyl
- About the Work: A portrayal of the untouchable core inside of us that cannot be conquered, traumatized, or commodified. This is symbolized by a Brocken Specter, an optical phenomenon naturally occurring at high altitudes which casts the shadow of an object or person onto clouds at a lower altitude, enveloped by a spherical rainbow. Also known by hikers as a "glory," these rare spectacles can appear to be 100 feet tall. Every translucent insect in this painting can be found in nature such as the white satin moth, book lice, garden symphylan, and the rose leafhopper nymph.
- About the Artist: Vanessa Powers is a figurative oil painter whose work uses visceral symbolic language to navigate her inner world and how it relates to our current cultural climate. Her surreal paintings explore themes including grief, vice, mortality, and resiliency. Powers is currently based in and from New York.
Los Herederos
Los Herederos (the inheritors) is a Queens-based non-profit organization dedicated to inheriting culture in the digital age. They engage in research-based documentation for public consumption to produce projects, programs and services that address the realities of local culture, evolving communities, and an increasingly diasporadical immigrant experience. They believe in the power and complexity of transmedia storytelling to educate and encourage a more culturally aware, equitable and sustainable society.
Jackson Hts-Roosevelt Av
Queens as Cultural Crossroads
Los Herederos has transformed a former retail space in the station into a multimedia and community-inspired public art installation, which also serves as a home base for their web radio station LH Radio. The installation, Queens as Cultural Crossroads, explores transportation, movement and sense of place through and interdisciplinary approach to ethnographic fieldwork and documentation. It is produced as part of a long term project they have undertaken with the Library of Congress to document Jackson Heights’ Diversity Plaza (which includes the Jackson Hts-Roosevelt Av/74 St-Broadway subway station complex) as a treasured gathering place. The temporary exhibition will share materials from the multivocal and multilingual digital Queens community archives via multiple mediums and media formats. Documentary images captured throughout the Plaza and surrounding neighborhood will be displayed on photo fabric transfers to create the sense of layered movement so central to evolving communities and neighborhood cultures. The exhibition prioritizes local BIPOC and immigrant community narratives and will include interpretive materials and other media assets in several of the most spoken languages in and around the borough (Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish, English, Nepali, Mandarin, Arabic, etc).
Queens as Cultural Crossroads will be open to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and select weekends.
WPZSCH
WPZSCH is a not-for-profit arts collective focusing on public exhibition and performance in non-traditional space. WPZSCH invites artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to showcase and collaborate on experimental and boundary pushing works which evade classification and commodification, with a major emphasis placed on accessibility, humor, and spontaneous joy.
The founding members of WPZSCH are artists Emmett Palaima and Nathan Asher Sherman.
Chambers Street
Chambers Hum
Chambers Hum is a public sound art installation playing a series of experimental and ambient compositions by a curated series of composers on a multi-channel sound system. Each composition will run for approximately one month.
Now Playing: Chambers Hum
Composer: Emmett Palaima
About the Work: In Taos, New Mexico, there is a hum, a low but constant resonance of the landscape. Vibrating just on the edges of the listener’s perception, it is heard most often in the solitary hours of the late night and the early morning. A 1995 study by the Acoustical Society of America found that the frequency of the hum varied by individual listener, from 32hZ to 80hZ, suggesting an internal, psychosomatic origin for the sensation, but also that listeners consistently identified a phenomenon of acoustic beating when a reference tone was played for comparison, an effect only produceable by two sounds interacting in physical space.
With Chambers Hum we have reintroduced this phenomenon into our urban environment of maximum distraction. Arriving subway cars produce a sustained vibration at 224hZ, which Chambers Hum uses as a root note for its tonality. By creating a slowly evolving tonal structure tuned to harmonize with the environmental sounds inherent to the subway system, Chambers Hum restores a connection to the universal order.
Art on the Ave
Art on the Ave NYC is a community-based non-profit organization founded by school teachers in the summer of 2020. The organization is dedicated to the elevation of local artists and the revitalization of neighborhoods. Art on the Ave uses both vacant storefronts and existing businesses to create street-facing exhibitions for all to enjoy.
81 St-Museum of Natural History
The ultimate busking station, the Sound Booth brings music to the space so all can enjoy their commute and journey. The space has been transformed into a music box designed to attract local buskers and encourage them to perform for commuters, students, tourists, and passers-by. Community members can look forward to themed performances such as Classical Wednesday, Thursday Jazz, Beatles Era Friday, Weekend Hip Hop with DJ Chris, and Amateur Night.
Former exhibitions
ChaShaMa
5 Av/53 St mezzanine
- Artwork Name: Urban Oasis: Nature in Transit
- Artist Name: Natalie Collette Wood
- Medium: Digitally printed chiffon, cast aluminum furniture, stainless steel, flocking, succulents, pillow moss, oyster shells, driftwood, reindeer moss, coconut liner, wire mesh, galvanized wire, and cactus soil.
- About the Work: "Urban Oasis: Nature in Transit" seeks to redefine urban spaces, particularly within transit areas like the MTA, by incorporating the adaptive and enchanting qualities of nature. The installation merges an abandoned living room with natural materials, becoming a symbol of resilience in the urban landscape. Through this integration, Urban Oasis not only enhances the surroundings but also celebrates the vitality of the diverse communities within these dynamic urban environments.
- About the Artist: Natalie Collette Wood is a multidisciplinary artist, mother, and educator, living and working in The Bronx, NY. She creates work to meditate on and reflect upon the intersections between the passage of time, nature, and the built environment.
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art is bringing its landmark exhibition, the Whitney Biennial, into the subway system. A special exhibition in vinyl comprised of artworks and accompanying text is now visible on structures that were previously used as newsstands as part of the MTA’s program to bring arts and culture to former retail spaces. Four of the six artworks featured are by artists included in MTA Arts & Design’s collection.
W 4 St-Washington Sq
- Artwork Name: Talking Shit with Viracocha’s Rainbow (Iteration I), 2023
- Artist Name: Eamon Ore-Giron
- Medium: Mineral paint and Flashe on canvas, printed on vinyl
- Artwork Name: Save Time, 2020
- Artist Name: Jane Dickson
- Medium: Oil stick on linen, printed on vinyl
- Artwork Name: Muhammad, 2001
- Artist Name: Dawoud Bey
- Medium: Chromogenic print, printed on vinyl
- Artwork Name: Sunrise, 1965
- Artist Name: Roy Lichtenstein
- Medium: Offset lithograph, printed on vinyl
Fordham Rd
- Artwork Name: The Red Smile, 1963
- Artist Name: Alex Katz
- Medium: Oil on linen, printed on vinyl
Jay St-MetroTech
- Artwork Name: A Lesson in Longing, 2019
- Artist Name: Jennifer Packer
- Medium: Oil on canvas, printed on vinyl
Vacant units available for activation
The MTA is not charging rent for these units, however interested entities will be required to submit an activation proposal, pass a background check, acquire insurance, and sign a license agreement prior to use. The MTA reserves the right to select proposals that closest meet the intent of the program.
If you are a nonprofit, community, or arts organization and would be interested in operating a unit, reach out to mtare@mtahq.org.