The Data Vandals go underground: a newsstand on the 6 train

As part of the MTA’s Vacant Unit Activation Program, we took over an abandoned newsstand on the downtown 6 platform at 51st and Lexington and turned it into a data-art gallery. When it’s closed, the outside is a thirty-foot mural of New York’s history and numbers for the 52,000 straphangers who pass every day. When it’s open — Sundays, 2 to 6 — it’s a place for conversation: rotating surveys, changing exhibitions, talks, music, and a free mini-tabloid newspaper (2,000 copies of Issue 1, Ratsy centerfold included).

Steven Heller wrote it up in Print before we’d finished scraping the grime off. VoCA covered the opening. Addison Wood made a short film about the build, and Mark Shaw photographed opening night, which involved champagne on a subway platform. This is the thing that made the most people stop and ask, what is this place?