Toronto Subway and RT - Stations and Features - Public Art

Public Art

Over time, Toronto's transit system has become a hidden art gallery, home to more than two dozen pieces scattered along the subway and streetcar routes.

One of the most memorable art pieces in the subway system is Charles Pachter’s "Hockey Knights in Canada", added to College Station in 1985. The two-part installation, just steps from Maple Leaf Gardens, depicts the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs squaring off from opposite sides of the subway tracks, with the Canadiens on the northbound side and the Leafs on the southbound side. The name of the artwork is a pun derived from Hockey Night in Canada.

The Spadina Line features many art installations. Spadina Station on that line features a tilework mural with approximately 10,000 circular tiles and another mural called Barren Ground Caribou by Joyce Wieland. St. Clair West Station features an enamel mural called Tempo by Gordon Rayner. Unusually, Eglinton West Station features an artwork called Summertime Streetcar by Gerald Zeldin, which consists of two enamel murals depicting PCC streetcars facing each other, although these streetcars had never served this station. Dupont Station features A Spadina Summer Under All Seasons, an installation from the 1970s. Using thousands of pieces of glass, artist James Sutherland built colourful mosaics of flowers directly into the station’s tiling. Two giant flowers face each other across the tracks, reaching upward into a mezzanine level lined with smaller flower mosaics.

The artwork at Dupont Station was the most extensive in the Toronto transit system until the Sheppard line opened in 2002. The Sheppard–Yonge Station features Immersion Land, a mosaic composed of 1.5 million one-inch tiles, created by Toronto artist Stacey Spiegel. The installation was developed from a digitized and pixelated blend of 150 photographs depicting lush landscapes, country homes, and rural scenes from Yonge Street as it stretches towards North Bay.

Each Sheppard line station has an artistic feature. The most notable of these is Leslie, a station that approaches the expanse of Dupont and Sheppard-Yonge’s installations. Five years before the station opened, artist Micah Lexier began collecting writing samples from the public of the words “Sheppard” and “Leslie”. Over 3,000 of these samples were used in the installation, and the words were silk-screened onto tiles. In total, 17,000 of these tiles are on the walls of the station, each featuring the handwritten contribution of a community member. The installation was dubbed Ampersand in recognition of the “&” symbol – the only consistent element of each tile.

Yorkdale Station formerly had a sculpture called "Arc-en-Ciel" (French for "Rainbow"), in which neon lights in various colours flashed in the appropriate direction when a train passed by. However, this stopped working soon after it was installed. Because the TTC had not budgeted for its maintenance, and at the artist's request, it has now been removed.

At Bayview Station, shadows of common objects such as apples and ladders silk screened to the linoleum and walls framed by patches of coloured tile gives it a kind of surreal look called Trompe-l'œil. Panya Clark Espinal is the artist who designed the art in the Bayview Station.

At Bessarion, images of the backs of peoples' heads have been silk-screened onto wall tiles that highlight the platform walls.

At Don Mills, metallic inlays of shells in the floor of the platform make it appear underwater, while in the concourse, tile patterns representing geological strata make it appear underground (which it is).

USA Today said of Toronto's Sheppard Subway: "Despite the remarkable engineering feats of this metro, known as Sheppard Subway, the art covering walls, ceilings, and platforms of all five stations that stands out. Each station is 'a total art experience where artists have created imaginative environments, uniquely expressing themes of community, location, and heritage' through panoramic landscapes and ceramic wall murals."

Osgoode and St. Patrick subway stations will be renovated to provide transit riders with a visual experience linking them to the major cultural institutions in the area, such as the Royal Ontario Museum, Gardiner Museum, Textile Museum of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, OCAD University and the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Renovation began at Museum Station in June 2007 and completed on April 8, 2008. At that station, there are columns that resemble Osiris, First Nations house posts, Doric columns found in the Parthenon, China's Forbidden City columns, and Toltec warriors, to mimic the nearby institution the station serves.