Well Met in the Subway

Kyra Markham, Well Met in the Subway, 1937, lithograph on paper, image: 9 ¹⁄₄ x 10 in. (23.4 x 25.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation, Inc. and museum purchase, 1974.7.4

Artwork Details

Title: Well Met in the Subway
Artist: Kyra Markham
Printer: George C. Miller
Date: 1937
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: image: 9 ¹⁄₄ x 10 in. (23.4 x 25.3 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Foundation, Inc. and museum purchase
Mediums Description: lithograph on paper
Classifications: Graphic Arts
Print
Subjects: Figure group
Recreation — leisure — reading
Recreation — leisure — conversation
Architecture — vehicle — subway
Object — written matter — newspaper
Object Number: 1974.7.4
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1974.7.4

Artwork Description

After studying drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago, Kyra Markham created artwork primarily to support her acting career. She first moved to New York City in 1913 and soon began working with theater companies across the country. She returned to visual art and to New York by 1929, painting murals and attending the Art Students League. The following decade, she experimented with lithography and created Social Realist prints depicting prosaic urban scenes imbued with social commentary. In this print, the subway is crowded with people, one of whom reads the Daily News, which reports a recent kidnapping. This detail adds a hint of danger and criminality to the subway's otherwise innocent and potentially humorous tangle of friends and strangers, similar to that seen nearby in Lamar Baker's prints Sadist and Pyromaniac.