Art at Amtrak

Art at Amtrak, the official public art program of Amtrak, presents diverse, unique and memorable art projects to enhance, invigorate and humanize the travel experience at Amtrak stations. The art program reflects and celebrates each region's creative preeminence by featuring contemporary artists through rotating exhibitions.

The program launched at New York Penn Station in June 2022, has expanded to Moynihan Train Hall in Summer 2023, to Washington Union Station and William H. Gray III 30th Street Station in Fall 2023.

Art at Amtrak is curated and produced by Debra Simon Art Consulting.

Fall 2024 Artwork



William H Gray III 30th Street Station


Roxana Azar in front of their artwork at William H. Gray III 30th Street Station.

ROXANA AZAR

Flourish, 2024
Windows, Cira Skybridge, digital print on moiré illusion film

Philadelphia William H. Gray III 30th Street Station
Customer Service Window, Main Concourse

Roxana Azar’s work focuses on how plant life can thrive, even in challenging circumstances. By digitally manipulating photographs, the artist creates botanical-inspired works that evoke the vitality of prosperous, lush environments filled with movement and energy.

Flourish was created by layering, abstracting and manipulating photos taken in greenhouses across the country. A greenhouse creates and sustains the conditions for botanical transplants to flourish, despite the plant’s change in location and climate. The windows of the Cira Skybridge are transformed into a greenhouse-like space where Azar’s botanical forms, created with bold colors and simple gestures, move and flow seamlessly alongside the activity on the bridge. Similarly, the digital print on moiré illusion film is meant to be seen in motion—the colors and forms undulate and you pass by. The playful compositions draw a parallel between the vital root systems of plants and the importance of our transportation systems. Our transit systems, much like the elements of a plant, are integral to creating connections and helping networks of people flourish and grow.

About the Artist

Roxana Azar is a Philadelphia-based multi-disciplinary artist. Their plexiglass sculptures, light art and digital photo collages create dynamic and variable viewing experiences. Images inspired by nature are distorted and manipulated through transparencies, color-shifting shadows and reflective materials. Their work includes holographic vases, mobiles, furniture and lucite florals with images of collaged greenhouses and gardens.



New York Penn Station


Chitra Ganesh in front of her artwork in the Penn Station Rotunda.

CHITRA GANESH

Regeneration, 2024
Digital print on vinyl adhesive

Penn Station Rotunda

Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which now encompasses animations, collages, large-scale installations, murals, video and sculpture. Ganesh uses her artwork to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality and power and to address the interconnectedness of the human experience and the natural environment.

Similar to the digital animation titled Coherence that Ganesh created for Moynihan Train Hall, Regeneration at Penn Station invites viewers to slow down and step out of their hectic commutes by taking in the site-specific work Ganesh has designed in response to the space. She features natural elements rendered in a graphic style that evokes aspects of pop culture and comic books and echoes themes found in science fiction and outer space-time travel.

Some of the subject matter, such as the Rose of Jericho and Welwitschia plant of Southwest Africa, represent resilience as they naturally have the ability to live for long periods of time and to regenerate themselves after periods of dormancy. Much of the flora depicted are common, like dandelions and irises, that one might encounter while walking around New York City and the fruits depicted, such as tangerines or olives, carry specific cultural significance. Outside of the station walls, these natural elements punctuate the experience of urban stress with a beauty and abundance that perseveres beyond the limitations of humanity.

Regeneration is meant to ground us and remind one of the vibrancy and life that thrives outside of man-made forms and constructed realities. The installation reconnects us with elements that transcend habits and desires, ultimately encouraging a regeneration of perspective and a reset of both the mental and the physical.

Eirini Linardaki stands in front of her artwork in a Penn Station hallway.

EIRINI LINARDAKI

Working Background, 2024
Digital print on vinyl adhesive film

Penn Station, Departure Concourse and Hilton Passageway

As an artist deeply connected to public transportation through her father’s work as a bus driver in Greece, Eirini Linardaki is thrilled to present Working Background, which incorporates fabrics and patterns found both within the station and collected in the neighboring garment district. These patterns represent the multiculturalism, energy and strength of Penn Station and its significance to the city. Central to the project are portraits of the dedicated people who make Penn Station operate on a daily basis. From traction power electricians to systems engineers, station cleaners to Amtrak’s beloved Red Caps, this work is an ode to their commitment and the human connections that support our public transportation systems.

Linardaki uses both digital and analog methods to create collages that evoke feelings of memory and themes of societal exchange and community. She seeks to foster cross-cultural understanding and appreciation, to be a catalyst for dialogue and connection.

About the Artist

Eirini Linardaki, born in Athens, Greece, is a Greek/French visual artist and public art project developer based in New York City, Newark and the island of Crete. From her work as an environmental activist in her youth in Greece to later work with Handicap International in Liberia advocating for people with disabilities, her journey has been shaped by environmental action, commitment to social justice and human connection.

She received her fine arts education at L.I.T. Limerick, Ireland, the Universität Der Kunst of Berlin, Germany and the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts of Marseille, France. Her projects, rooted in community engagement, emphasize accessibility and multiculturalism.

Linardaki has developed numerous public art projects in the US, collaborating with organizations such as New York City’s Parks Department, the NYC Mayor’s Office for Climate Policy, and the NYC Department of Transportation. As part of her community-based art practice, she has been an active member of Audible’s Newark Artist Collaboration, an initiative to transform Newark, NJ through public art. In 2024, she created a large-scale digital installation for Grand Central Terminal commissioned by the MTA Arts & Design and one for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in DUMBO.

Linardaki's work was recognized with the 2022 Artivist Award from Sing for Hope and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Newark Artist Accelerator Grant for 2023. She is the mother of two children.

Keep up with the artist via Instagram @linardakiandco and her website linardaki-parisot.com.

Spring 2024 Artwork



Moynihan Train Hall


Chitra Ganesh with her artwork at Moynihan Train Hall.

CHITRA GANESH

Coherence, 2024
Digital animations

Moynihan Train Hall, Main Hall Digital Screens
In Partnership with Empire State Development

Across a 20 year practice, Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh has developed an expansive body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, collages, computer-generated imagery, video and sculpture. Ganesh uses her artwork to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality and power and to address the human experience. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian art forms, such as Kalighat and Madhubani.

The sequence of movements featured in Coherence is inspired by “coherent breathing,” a meditative and concentrative practice that involves taking long, deep breaths at a slow rate. This type of breath work has roots in ancient cultures and, when paired with simple synchronized motions, aids with aligning the sympathetic nervous system and can be helpful in treating anxiety, depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The practice can also build the capacity and spaciousness of an individual so they can better endure the stresses of everyday life.

Coherence gives visitors to Moynihan Train Hall the opportunity to contemplate, slow down and experience a moment of tranquility as they pass through this highly trafficked public space. Each screen cycles through a different environment with similar movements, echoing how we all operate in a unique mental and physical space but still have parallels. The timing and sequence of images resonate with the rhythmic flow of human bodies on the go and encourage viewers to pause and participate, with their own bodies, in the harmonized motions they see on the screen.

About the Artist

Chitra Ganesh, born in 1975 in Brooklyn, NY, received a BA in Art-Semiotics and Comparative Literature from Brown University. She then attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, NY in 2002.

Ganesh's work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, USA; The Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Ford Foundation, NY, USA; University of Michigan Museum of Art, MI, USA; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA, USA; the Devi Art Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, India; the Saatchi Collection, London, UK; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Deutsche Bank, amongst others.

Ganesh is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards from various organizations including the New York Foundation for the Arts; Printed Matter; the Art Matters Foundation; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the Pollock Krasner Foundation; and the Lewis Center for the Arts. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.



Washington Union Station


William Kentridge's art installation at Moynihan Train Hall

Photo by Dolby Chadwick Gallery

KATHERINE TZU-LAN MANN

Potomac River Shen Series, 2024
Digital print on vinyl adhesive film

Washington Union Station, Passenger Waiting Area

Artist Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann creates large-scale paintings and paper installations that examine mythology, identity and landscape. With the notion of land tied deeply to the understandings of cultural and national identity, Mann paints abstract realms that situate within, and negotiate between, Chinese and Western canons of landscape picture-making.

For the Potomac River Shen Series, Mann uses flora and fauna such as waterlilies, pond lettuce and clovers to construct images of floating worlds that extend from nature, a reference to the “cloud rafts” often portrayed in Buddhist iconography. These elements are woven together into giant garland-scrolls that spawn from the form of a clam located in the center of each mural. The central clam figures depict the freshwater clams endemic to the Potomac River while the scrolls reference the documentation of historical and mythological narratives that give shape to the past and help inform the future. The clam figures painted by Mann also reference the clam monsters in Chinese folklore, called shen, that create mirages of cities, buildings and entire worlds out of bubbles and ultimately inspired the title of the series.

By alluding to mythical shen and “cloud rafts” through the illustration of creatures and botanicals found in Washington, DC’s beloved local river, this mural celebrates the magic and majesty of the tiniest denizens of our immediate environment.

About the Artist

Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann examines landscape painting, environment, and cultural estrangement by building luxuriant, cinematically scaled paper paintings and installations. These combine romantic, utopian and immersive sensibilities from both Chinese and Western landscape painting with a lexicon drawn from a personal mythology informed by Mann’s identity as a biracial, second-generation Asian American. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, and her work has been exhibited at the Kreeger Museum, Academy Art Museum, Walters Art Museum, American University Museum, Tides Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Rawls Museum, the US consulate in Dubai, UAE and the US embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon. Mann is based in Washington, DC, and is represented by Morton Fine Art.

Follow the artist on Instagram @ktzulan and visit her website at https://www.katherinemann.net/.
 

William Kentridge's art installation at Moynihan Train Hall

Photo by Art Enables

ART ENABLES

Forward: A Group Exhibition, 2024
Digital print on vinyl adhesive film

Washington Union Station, North Hangar Passageway

Art Enables is an art studio and gallery dedicated to amplifying the creative careers of artists with disabilities. Guided by the belief that artists with disabilities are vital to a robust arts landscape, Art Enables provides a platform for resident artists to develop and exhibit their work, creating space for their unique perspectives while dismantling stereotypes and celebrating inclusion.

Art at Amtrak is proud to showcase the dynamic work of 22 resident artists of Art Enables at Washington Union Station, offering travelers a window into an exciting part of the district’s rich arts community. All artists in this exhibition are mostly self-taught and represent a wide stylistic range. Some wield a clean precision depicting natural landscapes and realistic scenes, while others use abstract figures and shifting shapes to infuse familiar subjects with unexpected energy. Many artists pay close attention to every inch of space, filling what might be depicted as the absence of subject with a profusion of line work.

Here, six groupings of five windows represent this visual diversity, unified by various themes. A continuous horizon spans travel landscapes in the Around the World in Eighty Days set while swooping, colorful lines breeze through Technicolor Wind. Densely packed stripes and patterns buttress human figures in Holding Pattern. In Party Guests and Tide Pool, playful forms bubble, bloom and vibrate together in close quarters. And finally, Born in the Trees shares lush habitat views of birds and flowers in vivid greens and buttery yellows.

Exhibiting Artists

Jay Bird, Duane Blacksheare-Staton, Mara Clawson, Calvin “Sonny” Clarke, Jacqueline Coleman, Jabari Cooper, Josephine Finnell, Payman Jazini, Charmaine Jones, Toni Lane, Helen Lewis, Keith Lewis, Paul Lewis, Raymond Lewis, CeeJ Maples, Charles Meissner, Gary Murrell, Dennis Quillin, Jamila Rahimi, Eileen Schofield, A.T. and Imani Turner.

Curated by Marissa Long, Art Enables Gallery Director & Curator

Follow Art Enables on Instagram @artenables or visit art-enables.org.



Fall 2023 Artwork



Block 675 Fence


Artist Marisa Morán Jahn stands in front of her art

MARISA MORÁN JAHN

Re/Connections, 2023
Digital print on mesh fabric

Block 675 Fence, 30th Street, NYC

Located along Manhattan’s West Side Highway, adjacent to the Hudson River, and on former marshland, Re/Connections by artist Marisa Morán Jahn is a series of large-scale digital prints on mesh fabric that reflect on our interdependent relationship with water. 

Re/Connections draws influence from Meso-American and Chinese papercut art forms where the punctures are said to let the past through. For Jahn, who is of Chinese and Ecuadorian descent, the holes within the work and the mesh surface serve as portals or passages connecting both times and places. In Re/Connections, the artist meditates on the site’s former history as a key trading route and source of sustenance for animals and humans. By placing the artwork around the staging area where Amtrak and the Gateway Development Commission will build a new rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey, Re/Connections invites meditation on the transformative role of transportation and trade routes that still exist today. “Our stewardship of public resources like water, railways and civic space are critical to how communities thrive and strengthen resilience,” says Jahn.

About the Artist

Marisa Morán Jahn’s works redistribute power, “exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice” (ArtForum). Jahn, who explores “civic spaces and the radical art of play” (Chicago Tribune), codesigns small to urban-scale projects with immigrant families, domestic workers and public housing residents. Jahn’s work has engaged millions via the United Nations, Tribeca Film Festival, Obama’s White House, Venice Biennale of Architecture and through media coverage in the BBC, CNN, PBS Newshour, The New York Times, Univision Global and more. She is a Sundance and Creative Capital grantee, a Senior Researcher at MIT (her alma mater), an artist in residence at The National Public Housing Museum and the Director of Integrated Design at Parsons/The New School. With Rafi Segal, Jahn co-authored a book, Design & Solidarity (Columbia University Press, 2023), and co-founded Carehaus, the U.S.’s first care-based co-housing project. She is represented by Sapar Contemporary.


Follow the artist on Instagram @marisa_jahn and visit her website at marisajahn.com.

Special Thank You To

Marisa Morán Jahn / Studio REV- 

Micah Campbell Smith, Community Developer 

Ananya Mishra, Studio Assistant

William H Gray III 30th Street Station


Artist Joshua Frankel overlooks his video art installation in Moynihan Train Hall

ADAM CRAWFORD

EUPHONIC & CHROMATIC DRIFT, 2023
Digital print on clear vinyl adhesive film

William H. Gray III 30th Street Station, Main Concourse

Adam Crawford’s practice is grounded in his desire to create visually engaging and stylistically unique artwork that appeals to a diverse audience. When developing the Art at Amtrak commission, Crawford focused on the strong lines of the existing architecture, the verticality and height of the space and the spatial symmetry of the main concourse. He also considered the relationship between motion and sound and how both are amplified in a major transit hub, ultimately impacting its overall energy.

The resulting work, Euphonic and Chromatic Drift, is a clear vinyl mural on the window facades at the East and West ends of the station that employs pattern, rounded edges, and color as a response to the linear composition of the architecture. Crawford used the existing gridwork design as the base and sketched forms and pathways that extend from and within the lines of each window frame and column. His resonating shapes and saturated color communicate movement and energy through and around the frames, echoing the collective flow of those who pass through the station on any given day.

About the Artist

Adam Crawford has lived and worked in Philadelphia for 29 years. He has degrees from both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. Crawford is particularly drawn to both interior and exterior large-scale commissions and has several public-facing murals scattered throughout Philadelphia.

Follow the artist on Instagram @acrawfordart and visit his website at adamcrawfordart.com.

About the Curator

An award-winning public arts curator and producer, Debra Simon has more than 30 years of experience in visual and performing arts programming for civic organizations, the real estate industry and other companies. While working at the Downtown Alliance, she created the Music at Castle Clinton concert series, Dine Around Downtown and co-founded the River-to-River Festival in 2002. As the Director of Times Square Arts, Simon oversaw Midnight Moment, the world’s largest digital art exhibition on electronic billboards and the annual Valentine Heart design competition, among other projects for the over 300,000 daily visitors to Times Square. As Artistic Director at Brookfield Properties, she led a national arts program that planned and executed multi-disciplinary programming, presenting over 500 free events annually in New York, Denver, Los Angeles and Houston. Collaborations with artists, architects, landscape designers, local arts organizations and presenting partners have contributed to her expertise in creating and reimagining public spaces. Current clients include Amtrak, Taconic Partners, Hudson Yard Hell’s Kitchen Alliance, Fifth Avenue Association and Third Street Music School Settlement. For more information, visit Debra Simon Art Consulting. Simon is collaborating with producer Common Ground Arts to realize Art at Amtrak. Visit dsimonartconsulting.com for more information.

Spring 2023

Karen Margolis
Derrick Adams

Fall 2023

Joshua Frankel
David Rios Ferreira
Shoshanna Weinberger
Shazia Sikander
Tim Doud

Fall 2022

Ghost of a Dream
Dennis RedMoon Darkeem

Spring 2024

William Kentridge
Tin & Ed
Rico Gatson

Summer 2022

Saya Woolfalk
Dahlia Elsayed

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