Doing transit infrastructure otherwise: Arts in Transit , the Southwest Corridor

Abstract

The Arts in Transit project, which took place in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1980s, offers an example of transit art and transit art practice with the potential for engagement with, and agency through, infrastructure. In 1984, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) relocated Boston’s Orange Line from an elevated track to an underground heavy rail system along a 4.7-mile stretch of land referred to as the Southwest Corridor. Arts in Transit was designed and managed by UrbanArts, Inc. as a subcontractee of the MBTA, and installed public art in nine new transportation facilities along the Southwest Corridor through a community-involved process of artwork selection. Though Arts in Transit was a familiar project locally during its time, it is relatively unknown to a wider audience. Through previously unexamined archival materials and interviews with participants, this historical case study uncovers Arts in Transit ’s potential for doing infrastructure otherwise through the process and practice of transit art, revealing the processes in which community groups affirmed the sociotechnical nature of mobility infrastructure through the visual.