Mary Beams

Mary Beams (born March 30, 1945[1]) is an American artist and animator, best known as the creator of the Boston MBTA Green Line murals.[2][3]

The murals in 2013

Beams 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.[3]

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."[3]

Beams worked as a teaching assistant at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and her work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art.[3] Beams' animated work has had a resurgence in recent years, screening at art institutions in North America and Europe. In February 2017, four of her shorts were included in the program Independent Frames: American Experimental Animation in the 1970s + 1980s, curated by Herb Shellenberger with Tate Film at the Tate Modern.[4] In March 2018, Beams' animated work was screened as part of an experimental animation program at the Walker Art Center called Animatedly Yours.[5] And in the fall of 2018, her short film Paul Revere was Here (1976), was included in The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation at REDCAT.[6]