Next Stop, Gallery Place

Twenty-five years ago today, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority ran it's first Metrorail passenger train, opening the Metro system that is known as "America's Subway."

The Smithsonian American Art Museum sits right above the Gallery Place metro stop, while our Renwick Gallery is a short walk from the Farragut West station.

A Washington, D.C., Metrorail car looks a little different from this subway scene painted by Lily Furedi.

Furedi offers a glimpse of life in late night New York, where strangers from all walks of life are thrown together for the duration of a train ride. Identifiable by their clothing—a tuxedo-clad violinist, businessmen in suits and fedoras, workers wearing overalls, and fashionably dressed women—they doze, gaze, or read, living private lives in the middle of the crowded city.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Scenes from American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Lily Furedi, 1901 Hungary–1969 United States, Subway, about 1934, oil, 39 x 48 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service.