Inside Los Angeles’ traveling art exhibit Metro Art Bus

One of the joys of living in Los Angeles is that performances and art exhibits can be found almost everywhere, from public murals around the city for impromptu concerts along Los Angeles River.

In that spirit, Metro’s Art Bus delivers dozens of portraits to regular bus routes throughout Los Angeles County—and if you’re lucky, they might even show up on your local route.

artwork

When you’re about to board a Metro art bus, maybe you’ll see these very words written in large letters on the side windows, or maybe you’ll notice portraits lining both sides of the vehicle. In any case, you can immediately see that this is not an ordinary bus – after all, it has a covering on the outside that is not trying to sell you something.

But the art exhibit isn’t just outside—you’ll also find dozens of portraits inside, where advertisements are usually placed. As long as the bus isn’t filled to the brim and you don’t mind giving up your seat, you can walk around and look at the different portraits.

The portraits also depict many different modes of transport, including air travel. One such portrait is “The Traveler” by Colombian-American artist Caroline Castaño. The work is a collage that combines signs that many people might recognize from Los Angeles, as well as flowers and plants from Colombia and California, where Castaño now lives.

Other subway bus portraits have various personal backstories woven into them: “Better Together,” by artist Edwin Ushiro, is a portrait of him and his wife on a subway bus. According to Zeller, this is because the couple regularly took the subway to see each other when they started dating.

“He said that Metro was really the lifeblood of their relationship, and that’s a really great feeling,” Zeller said. “We didn’t force him to say it, but he said it was really important for them to be able to communicate with each other.”

How to find out buses

As with many aspects of Los Angeles life, from housing lotteries to jury duty, finding the Metro Art Bus is pure luck. There are four Metro Art Buses, but none of them follow fixed routes, and the routes they serve change from day to day.

“They are all based in different bus departments in different parts of the county,” Zeller said. “They travel all over the place, so hopefully you’ll see them in different places.”

Zeller told LAist that Metro currently doesn’t have a tracking tool to tell riders where the art buses are, so the best way to increase your chances of seeing one in the wild is to get out and ride more buses.

“Consider it a surprise,” Zeller said. “One day it will surprise you when you least expect it, if you are walking down the street or waiting for a bus, and then, lo and behold, that particular bus picks you up.”

The only sure way to discover them is to go to an event like CicLAvia where Metro will showcase them. If you see one of these while it’s parked, you’ll have the added bonus of being able to pose for photos in the driver’s seat.

How it happened

Metro art buses have been operating since 2022, although from almost Total 2000 metro busesThis is understandable if you haven’t encountered it in the wild yet.

Most of Metro Art’s offerings are concentrated in train stations, but the majority of Metro riders ride buses—about 75%, according to the agency—and this project brings Metro art to those riders.

Once Metro took on the project, Zeller said it was a matter of determining which portraits to include and figuring out how to layer them onto the bus surround, especially since physical features such as the bus windows limited the amount of exhibition space outside. .

And with this project, Metro hopes to bring public transportation and public art even closer together.

“This is for our riders. It’s about our riders,” Zeller said. “It’s for the person walking down the street, or even for people driving cars. It really is for everyone.”

To view all the portraits featured on the Metro Art Bus, see Here.