MTA, Queens Museum Art Collaboration Honors Service Workers

QUEENS, NY — A new public art project unveiled Tuesday is adorning subway stations across the city with messages of gratitude for service workers.

The citywide installation by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the unofficial artist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation, will animate 2,000 digital displays throughout the subway system with a note reading: "Dear Service Worker,'Thank you for keeping NYC alive!' For -----> forever…"

Vinyl banners with the same message will cover the 200-foot-long glass facade of the Queens Museum, which spearheaded the project, for the next year. It will also be displayed every 15 minutes on the digital billboard at 20 Times Square in Manhattan.

The locations were chosen to reach the city’s public service workers, whether they commute by subway or drive past the museum on the Grand Central Parkway, according to a news release from the MTA and the Queens Museum.

"Mierle Laderman Ukeles has worked tirelessly to make visible the labor of public service workers since 1979 and this message will flow through the infrastructure of the city as New York recovers," Sally Tallant, president and executive director of the Queens Museum, said in a statement.

For four decades, Laderman Ukeles has put maintenance and sanitation workers at the center of her work. Her best-known project, called "Touch Sanitation," involved her shaking hands with all 8,500 employees of the Department of Sanitation from 1979 to 1980.

"Now, four decades later, in the midst of this horrific pandemic, my statement becomes newly relevant to the city's infrastructure service workers, who are physically out there working every day to make sure our city remains a living entity," Laderman Ukeles said.