Any native Angeleno knows that their identity as a resident is inextricably linked to their mode of transportation within the city– Los Angeles is a place where the vehicle in which you traverse the metropolis serves an extension of your home. Metro Art knows that the extension of home can be as beautiful and personal as the home itself. Thus, the organization, a subsidiary of LACMTA, vivifies the Los Angeles metro lines through ongoing art and performance exhibitions.

This fall, Metro Art is celebrating that beautiful extension of home: it’s the one-year anniversary of the K Line, and Metro Art has debuted a new exhibition: Here: Arts & Culture Along the K, at the Museum of African American Art at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. The multimedia exhibition, which celebrates the rich cultural and artistic histories of the communities serviced by the nascent K-line (West Adams, Jefferson Park, Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, Hyde Park, Inglewood, and Westchester), had an opening reception on October 7th, and will run until the December 30th, 2023. 

The exhibition, along with companion publication, uplifts the tastemakers, artists, organizations, and cultural paragons that shaped the K-line transit art program. Among those on exhibition are artists among the likes of Alexis Hunley, Ingrid Calame, Kenturah Davis, Mara Lonner, Mickalene Thomas, Mobolaji Olambiwonnu, Moses X. Ball, Sam Pace, Sherin Guirguis, Wakana Kimura, and more.

The free companion publication broadens the exhibition’s exploration of culture along the line, featuring Metro Art commissions and collaborations shaped by over 150 creative organizations and individuals responding to distinct neighborhoods with their own iterative photographs, prose, and artwork. Like the function of the K line itself, the artwork displayed in the exhibition reaches across geographical and temporal boundaries– the idea of here, interpolated through the eyes and art of those who occupy here, is concretized and honored through the exhibition and the publication through the rest of the year.

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