9. Art at Amtrak at Penn Station

The Emphatics by Saya Woolfalk. Photo courtesy Amtrak.

Commuters passing through New York Penn Station (NYP) can now enjoy viewing Art at Amtrak, a new year-round public art initiative that has brought a variety of visual works to enliven a hub that serves as a front door to New York City. Art at Amtrak will also serve as a creative platform to specifically showcase the work of New York and New Jersey-based artists. 

The first inaugural piece for the initiative, entitled Parallel Incantations, was created by Dahlia Elsayed, who is known for crafting text and image-based work that synthesizes both the internal and external experience of place together. For Parallel Incantations, Elsayed drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian temples and Islamic architecture to create a piece that offers viewers suggestions of expansiveness, air, and ambient light. In contrast, Saya Woolfalk—the creator of Art at Amtrak’s second inaugural piece, The Emphatics—typically produces work that combines science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine our current world. For The Emphatics, Woolfalk simulates a natural environment designed utilizing the forms and patterns of medicinal plants found in New York and New Jersey and local landscape scenes from paintings of Hudson River School students. Elsayed and Woolfalk’s work will remain on display through mid-September.