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Wagner Photographs Grace New Metro Station
12 October 2022
San Francisco photographer Catherine Wagner is among a select group of artists who have embellished the new stations of the Central Subway extension of Muni Metro with their work.
Yerba Buena/Moscone Station. Wagners 1970s images of Moscone Center under construction are mounted on the walls. Image courtesy of Ethan Kaplan Photography.
Wagner's work will, appropriately enough, be on view at the Yerba Buena/Moscone Station. On the concourse level, Wagner has translated several of her photographs from the late 1970s documenting the construction of the George Moscone Convention Center into multiple large-scale permanent works.
Almost 50 years ago, she lugged a large-format camera to the site, sometimes setting up on scaffolding, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to document the construction.
"I was working with the idea of future ruins, or archaeology in reverse, investigating construction as process and as metaphor for change," she says of the images.
Today, Arc Cycle, Wagner's site-specific work for the Central Subway, consists of six laser-etched granite artworks 12.5 feet high by 10 feet wide at the concourse level, as well as art glass at the station's entry at 14 feet high by 26 feet wide.
The installation is part of program that awarded contracts to local artist to grace the new four new stations of the Central Subway extension their work.
"The artworks for the Central Subway Public Art Program were commissioned through the city's two percent-for-art program and the SFMTA is honored to be hosting these interpretations and stories that will give our riders an even more vibrant experience of riding the Central Subway," said Jeffrey Tumlin, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency director.
Among the artists who participated are Yumei Hou, Clare Rojas, Erwin Redl, Jim Campbell and Werner Klotz, Hughen/Starkweather, Leslie Shows, Moto Ohtake, Tomie Arai and Roxy Paine.
The Central Subway extension is scheduled to open for weekend service on Nov. 19. Full runs are scheduled to start in early 2023.