Barbara Kruger Untitled (It's a small world but not if you have to clean it)

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, NJ) is world-renowned for her pioneering use of commercial design and advertising techniques in her art. Eye-catching and media-savvy, her work comments on social and cultural issues while remaining completely accessible. In the early 1980s Kruger was one of the artists invited by the Public Art Fund to create artworks for the first LED “Spectacolor” board in Times Square. Since then, Kruger has continued to explore the latest available media outlets as sites for her work. Doing everything from designing billboards and posters to wrapping a whole bus, Kruger has created bold, stylish images, which have become a part of our popular culture.

Kruger selected a building across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the hub for bus traffic to and from New York City, as the place to feature her banner, Untitled (It’s a small world but not if you have to clean it). The photograph shows a 1950s-era woman with a magnifying glass held up to her eye. Her enlarged eye stares out at us. The same image hangs as a smaller banner along the West Side Highway. As always, Kruger’s art is open to multiple readings: the banners call attention to our neglect of those who clean our offices and homes as well as to the effects of human activity on the environment.