Art For Metropasses' Sake

Photo of the April Metropass by Stephen Michalowicz/Torontoist.

The TTC's newfound propensity for remodelling isn't limited to just their stations, shelters, routes, and vehicles: the transit organization is now in the midst of exploring how to open up the Metropass to local artists and arts institutions in time for the summer.

Chair Adam Giambrone told Torontoist that he's "not trying to get people too excited" about the change: the list of conditions on the pass's back needs to stay the same, and the basic elements on the front need to stay the same size and fit that all-important condition of "readability....so that operators can assess the validity of the pass." But that doesn't mean there aren't a few things worth getting excited about. The TTC has its eyes on having art fill a space two and a half centimetres tall and three centimetres wide, about the size of the photo of Queen Station on the April pass pictured above, and Giambrone suggests that they may well go further. "It might be interesting to see people's design ideas," he hinted. "I'm interested in seeing if people think [that allocated space for art] is enough." We, for one, think it's not: back in January, we featured a set of Metropass mockups made by artist Valentine Makhouleen that used the entire area of the pass as a canvas while still prominently, and consistently, displaying some of the necessary information.

Because, says Giambrone, "this is still a work in progress," no source or arbiter of art has yet been decided on, but the TTC has its eyes on the public sector. "We are trying to avoid having to judge art," Giambone says, "and by teaming up with a public sector agency or multiple ones we avoid that problem." Unsurprisingly, both OCAD and the ROM's Institute for Contemporary Culture (or ICC)—some of the organizations Giambrone named as potential partners—were on board when we emailed them. "We're delighted that the TTC is considering this innovative idea," says the ICC's Managing Director Francisco Alvarez. "Not only will this help local arts groups reach a huge audience, it will make using the Metropass more pleasurable and further cement Toronto's reputation as a Creative City." (Capitalization his.) Sarah Mulholland, OCAD's Media and Communications Officer, suggested that her school could handle the whole not-really-a-redesign-but-it-maybe-might-be, working within whatever guidelines the TTC provided. Or, she said, "if the idea was to include OCAD student art on the passes," the school could "create a submission/vetting process....students could be asked to submit work that either fits the dimensions allowed in the card, or that could be cropped to fit, and a jury of OCAD faculty could be involved in choosing, say, twelve images that appear over the course of a year."

"I believe," Mulholland carefully concluded, "our faculty and students would welcome the opportunity to work with the TTC to create a beautifully designed Metropass that would become something valued as much (or more) for its aesthetics as it is for its function." And that'll probably be the big problem: how to balance the need for a Metropass that works the way the TTC says it needs it to and the desire for one that looks as nice as we all want it to. Giambrone is, he says, "determined to get art on the pass." It's whether that art will still have an ugly frame or not that's a little more up in the air.