Name Mary Beams | ||
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Screening room with caroline leaf and mary beams preview
Mary Beams (born March 30, 1945) is an American artist and animator, best known as the creator of the Boston MBTA green line murals.
She created 19 murals for the city's Government Center station in the late 1970s. When they were removed in 2015 during an overhaul of the station, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority made efforts to contact her and return the paintings. She rejected their offer to return the paintings, and agreed to put them up for public auction.
Describing the murals, Beams said "I'd put anything I felt like putting, so in one window you might see giant hands holding giant newspapers, and then in the next you might see a group of people playing with a dog."
Beams worked as a teaching assistant at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and her work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art.