A cavernous pit in the foreground of this print reveals a subterranean world taking shape as laborers excavate a new line of New York City’s subway system. Ruth Chaney chaired the Subway Art Division, a collaboration between the WPA and the Artists’ Union, a communist-backed group organized by artists. This Division—which included Elizabeth Olds, Claire Mahl Moore, Florence Kent, and Ida Abelman, all of whose work is on view nearby—proposed murals to fill the growing subway network. Chaney and her comrades were committed to the public use of art rather than its private ownership by the elite. Subway Excavation represents the opening up of both a new system for transportation and, Chaney hoped, a new venue for bringing art to the masses.