Glove Cycle

Glove Cycle is a 1984 public art installation by Mags Harries, located throughout the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Porter subway and commuter rail station in Porter Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"[3] Robert O. Boorstin from The Harvard Crimson adds that there are gloves "in piles, gripping rails, pushing imaginary buttons—as a constant image that the passenger follows from one point of the station to another".

[4] Mags Harries explains that the gloves she crafted "are anthropomorphic objects with many character possibilities and by their multiplication, take on a life form that might be analogous to the people movement in the subway.

Initially her concept revolved around bronze tree roots appearing to come through the walls and into the stations.

Harries stated, "The whole philosophy of subway stations, it turns out, is to make them seem as un-underground as possible," something the tree roots idea would be the exact opposite of.

a long barrel vaulted room with red pipes emerging from the center of the floor and train tracks on the right
Interior of Porter station showing the inbound platform