Underpass Art Installations
NoMa is home to a trilogy of immersive art installations that the NoMa Parks Foundation envisioned and built to improve the experience of people traveling between the east and west sides of the neighborhood.
K Street Virtual Gallery
K Street NE Underpass
The K Street Virtual Gallery is a public outdoor art gallery featuring original, digital art projected on to the walls of the Amtrak underpass between First and Second Streets NE in NoMa. The K Street Virtual Gallery is a living canvas that enables the NoMa BID to bring new and different types of art to the neighborhood on a rotating basis, and completes the trilogy of outdoor underpass art exhibits that the NoMa BID first created back in 2018 with the opening of Rain, followed by Lightweave in 2019. The K Street Virtual Gallery is illuminated daily from 6 a.m. to midnight and is open and free to the public.
My Ly
My Ly was the first artist to exhibit work at the K Street Virtual Gallery. Ly’s installation, which was on display from April through November 2023, captured the vibe and energy of NoMa by focusing on how people move through the neighborhood. Ly is the founder and creative director behind My Ly Design, a local, woman-owned, minority-owned CBE practice in DC focused on architecture, interiors, urban design, and public arts.
Nekisha Durrett
Nekisha Durrett’s exhibit, “Centuries” was illuminated in the K Street Virtual Gallery from November 2023 – December 2024. “Centuries” celebrated the contributions of Black women to the sport of cycling. Durrett drew her inspiration from the story of five Black women who in 1928, over the course of three days, cycled over 250 miles (two and a half centuries in cycling terms) from New York City to Washington, DC. They traversed hilly, rough, and dangerous roads through cold and stormy weather, but riding during the Jim Crow era presented an additional, more existential threat as they trekked through sundown towns under hostile surveillance.
Jackie Hoysted
STUPENDOUS: The Uline Ice Arena, is a dynamic digital light projection launched in December 2024 and created by DMV multimedia artist Jackie Hoysted. STUPENDOUS celebrates the rich entertainment history of the Uline Arena. Through vivid, stylized depictions of events such as basketball, rodeos, circuses, concerts, synchronized swimming and more, Hoysted reimagines the variety of activities once held in the iconic space. Hoysted succeeds in capturing the magic and energy of this historic venue where the Beatles performed their first U.S. concert in 1964.
Lightweave
L Street NE Underpass
Lightweave, designed by FUTUREFORMS, turns vibrations from passing trains and sounds in the underpass into dynamic auroras of patterned light across four different hues and variable intensities of light.
Rain
M Street NE Underpass
Designed by Thurlow Small Architecture + NIO architecten, Rain comprises 4,000 LED-powered polycarbonate tubes that glow with a soft blue-white light and pulse in response to traffic flow in the underpass.