NYTM Exhibitions: Shining a light on The Subway Sun, FAREwell, MetroCard, & The Subway Is…

On view through December 7, 2025
Shining a light on The Subway Sun: The art of Fred G. Cooper and Amelia Opdyke Jones
Over five decades, The Subway Sun advised, informed, and admonished New York subway riders—encouraging civility, safety, cleanliness, and pride in their city and its mass transit rail system. For the bulk of its existence, two artists gave the campaign its distinctive tone: Fred G. Cooper and Amelia Opdyke Jones. This exhibit features more than 40 selections from the New York Transit Museum’s collection of approximately 120 original poster artworks and more than one hundred vintage posters, most produced between 1936 and 1965.

On view through May 31, 2026
The Subway Is…
You take it to work, to school, or for a night out. It’s become a shorthand for New York — or urbanity in the abstract. It’s the New York City subway. It moves millions of people — and has since the day it opened on October 27th, 1904. Using images and objects from the Museum collection, this exhibit explores some of the endless ways to complete the sentence, “The Subway Is…”

Ticket To Ride
Through archival photographs, ephemera, and objects from the Transit Museum’s extensive collection, Ticket to Ride shows the evolution of fare collection across all of New York’s modes of transportation. Visitors will see and touch different types of collection equipment such as turnstiles and fare boxes, get a sense the colossal process of fare collection, and see some of the people who make sure the money goes where it’s supposed to go.

Opens December 17, 2025
FAREwell, MetroCard traces the rise and retirement of the iconic fare card that reshaped daily life for millions of New Yorkers. When the MetroCard debuted in 1994, its mission was twofold: introduce new technology to the transit system and speed the elimination of tokens as a way to pay fares. In the decades that followed, the MetroCard became almost as iconic as the token itself, bearing safety reminders, commemorating anniversaries, and celebrating cultural moments. As OMNY becomes the new way to pay, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the MetroCard’s origins, its systemwide rollout, the technology behind it, and the many ways it became a cultural icon for a generation of riders.