New exhibit at NY Transit Museum highlights 100 years of commuting through The New Yorker cartoons
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- A new exhibition from a partnership between The New York Transit Museum and The New Yorker is highlighting the humor, challenges and century's worth of insights into the daily grind of commuting in the city through cartoons.
"Commentary On The Commute" features roughly 95 pieces in the New York Transit Museum's Grand Central Gallery, with no shortage of folklore from within the city's transit system.
The partnership comes as The New Yorker celebrates its centennial birthday and from countless artists creating more iconic illustrations over the years -- many with a focus on transportation.
"The cartoons, in particular, are just a moment of zeitgeist on the page," said New York Transit Museum's Concetta Bencivenga."It sort of captures a perfect snapshot of what it's like to live and move around this region."
Jodi Shapiro -- curator of the exhibit -- says she had "an embarrassment of riches" with what she was provided to look through. But for the covers, she looked for composition and something else to catch everyone's eye.
"Cartoons that didn't need a caption, if they didn't have one," she added. "That anyone could look at them and find something humorous in it."
The show is layered and at times powerful. One piece of the exhibit is from March 2020 at Grand Central when COVID shut down the city.
"It does remind you, in only a way, that a visual image can kind of bring you back to, oh that was deep," said Bencivenga.
Even though the exhibit spans a century, many of the moments in the cartoons are evergreen. Some even from the 1940s that people can relate to today, showing a stranger all up in your business.
"There are going to be things about delays, romantic moments, missed connections," acknowledged Bencivenga. "It all happens in this system."
The exhibit is free and will be in place through October.
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