Project Description
Inspired by the concept of moving both body and mind, and by the station itself as an excavation site, the glass murals invite transit riders on a journey through time and across continents. Larger than life images of objects, drawn from the vast and diverse collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, create an immersive environment that blurs the line between past and present. The artwork encourages viewers to think about museum collections and their connections to the outside world in unexpected ways.
Gonzales-Day partnered with the LACMA curators he worked with on his artwork design development to present a panel discussion at the museum. He was joined by Eve Schillo, Associate Curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, and Rita Gonzalez, the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art. They discussed his site-specific artwork design and how LACMA’s extensive permanent collection was used as source material for his artwork concept, which explored collections, cultural representation, and connections between past and present.
Artist Statement
“Rodin once said, ‘I invent nothing, I rediscover.’ I believe [my] project will offer visitors a chance to discover and rediscover some of the city’s richest cultural assets, as well as to further position Los Angeles within an increasingly global context.”
About the Artist
KEN GONZALES-DAY (b. 1964, Santa Clara, California) earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, a Master of Arts in art history from Hunter College, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas and is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; The Getty; LACMA; MOCA, Los Angeles; MoMA, NYC; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; The Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. Gonzales-Day has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including grants from Art Matters, the California Community Foundation, the Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Western States Arts Federation. Gonzales-Day holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Art at Scripps College, where he is a longtime professor of art, and he is a member of the Board of Directors at The Mike Kelley Foundation as well as at L.A.C.E. (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). In addition to his commissions for LA Metro, he completed a billboard project and commission from the collections of the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the Yale Peabody in New Haven in 2024 and his commission for Sound Transit in downtown Redmond opened in 2025.