But in the last several months, with help from a grant and the transportation authority's Arts for Transit program, Masstransiscope is once again playing to carloads of audiences on Manhattan-bound Q and B trains as they leave the DeKalb Avenue station and head toward the bridge.
Twenty years ago, Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Arts for Transit program, was new to the transportation agency, and the mural project was her first assignment as a supervisor.
The birds are the work of Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz, New York sculptors who were commissioned to create them for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program, a 16-year-old initiative that spends more than $1 million a year on art throughout the New York City transit system.
The Arts for Transit program commissioned work by Luisa Caldwell.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program has selected Robert Wilson to create an artwork for the station.
He wrote the Occupational Safety and Health Act and sponsored the creation of the federal urban transit program.
Then, three years ago, the Chasins discovered Access-A-Ride, the city's door-to-door transit program for the disabled.
"These architectural fragments are about New York," said Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Arts for Transit program.
The sign was commissioned 10 years ago through the M.T.A.'s Art for Transit program as a temporary work.
But that, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program, is one of their strengths.
Today, the M.T.A. Arts for Transit program includes 215 permanent artworks in stations across the system (with more than 50 in development).
