New York Subway Map Reimagined for ‘City of Women,’ with Stations Named for Artists Kara Walker, Joan Mitchell, and More -ARTnews

A portion of the “City of Women 2.0” map, by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro.

CITY OF WOMEN 2.0

As monuments, parks, and thoroughfares across the land get renamed to reflect different dignitaries, a New York City subway map revamped by writers Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro has been updated. Recently revived in the form of City of Women 2.0, it was originally one of 26 such maps in Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, a book published in 2016. The map renames stations with those of women with connections to the city; it’s on view in an exhibition titled “Navigating New York” at the New York Transit Museum through January 2020.

Among the names on the map are some notable artists, including Kara Walker (a new inclusion for a stop in Williamsburg) and Beverly Pepper (just north of the Xenobia Bailey stop on the G train in Fort Greene). In Manhattan, Peggy Guggenheim shows up near her namesake museum, with Georgia O’Keeffe just a few stops south—in proximity to Louise Bourgeois and Grace Jones. Yoko Ono has a prime location along Central Park, and Emma Sulkowicz is stationed along the 1/2/3 line.

Downtown, Patti Smith is at home in the East Village, with Diane Arbus and Ana Mendieta nearby. A particularly pleasant junction in the West Village near Chelsea is home to stops for Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell, and Harmony Hammond claims a bustling A/C/E junction in Tribeca (a hip neighborhood these days).

“Names offer really powerful signals about what we value as a society, about the histories that we avow, about the histories that we want to push under the rug,” Jelly-Schapiro told Gothamist of the map. “And I think it’s an incredibly powerful and overdue conversation we’re having now about who are the people that we celebrate in public space and how does that shape how we experience those places.”