Glove Cycle
| Company type | Public art installation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Public art, Sculpture |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Founder | Mags Harries |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States |
| Products | Bronze glove sculptures |
Glove Cycle is a public art piece created in 1984 by Mags Harries, installed throughout the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Porter subway and commuter rail hub in Porter Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This artwork consists of 54 bronze glove sculptures and was developed with a funding allocation of US$30,000.
Sculpture
The Glove Cycle installation comprises 54 separate bronze gloves scattered around Porter station. These gloves appear on a turnstile, nestled between escalators, arranged in small clusters at escalator bases and on the inbound train platform, as well as embedded into the flooring across platforms and the mezzanine level. Each glove grouping creates brief narrative scenes that express a range of emotions and stories. Richard Wolkomir of Smithsonian Magazine highlights the presence of gloves with unusual shapes—examples include a large glove seemingly "birthing" a smaller one, gloves featuring two thumbs or only three fingers, and one glove modeled after Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam."
According to Robert O. Boorstin from The Harvard Crimson, the gloves appear “in piles, clutching rails, pressing unseen buttons,” serving as guides for travelers navigating the station. Artist Mags Harries describes them as anthropomorphic figures representing various characters that collectively mirror the flow of subway commuters. Boorstin considers this interpretation somewhat overstated.
History
The creation of Glove Cycle was part of the MBTA and Cambridge Arts Council’s "Arts on the Line" initiative, which aimed to incorporate artwork into the MBTA’s Northwest Extension of the Red Line subway stations during the late 1970s and early 1980s. This program set a precedent nationwide for integrating public art within transit environments. Out of more than 400 submissions for five new stations, 20 artworks were chosen, with a combined budget of $695,000 USD—approximately 0.5% of the Red Line Northwest Extension’s total construction expenses. The Glove Cycle installation itself was allocated $30,000.
Initially, Harries proposed bronze tree roots emerging from station walls; however, architects declined this concept because it emphasized the subterranean aspect of the station, which they sought to downplay. She then explored designing turnstiles shaped like sheep but abandoned this idea after noticing lost gloves melting in Boston’s snowbanks. These discarded gloves ultimately inspired her final sculptural concept.
Within ten years of installation, vandals had stolen three individual gloves by removing them from their mounted positions.[1]
External links
- ↑ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2123: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).