In Lean Times, New Ways to Reach Out

In a campaign that ended this month, the Museum of Modern Art plastered a Brooklyn subway station with reproductions of 58 works from the museum’s permanent collection. The Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street station’s tiled walls and columns and even the arms of the turnstiles were covered with images of iconic works in the MoMA collection, including Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup cans, Monet’s waterlilies and Duchamp’s bicycle wheel. The campaign, which was seen by an estimated 50,000 commuters a day, was intended to remind New Yorkers of the riches that make up the museum’s holdings.