MTA Arts & Design

72nd Street

Robert Hickman

Laced Canopy, 2002

Mosaic glass skylight in north control house

Laced Canopy has over 100 decorative glass mosaic panels - over one million fragments of glass - installed in the skylight of the subway control house, the first above-ground station house built in New York in over a century. The work's light and lacy effect is achieved from trapping the mosaic fragments between two sheets of specially fabricated glass. The knots interwoven into the composition are also representations of musical notes from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto, referencing Verdi Park, in which the station is located, and the nearby Metropolitan Opera. Robert Hickman describes the sparkling canopy as "a delicate covering of crushed diamonds." Nineteenth-century English sources inform the work, whose concept is based on the 1851 London Crystal Palace; William Morris fabric and wallpaper designs, as well as Greco-Roman knot patterns, are incorporated as motifs.