Look Closer: Searching for New York’s Hidden Art

Standing in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street, a person can easily experience a multi-sensory overload — red double-decker tour buses, tourists asking which way the M&M store is, flashy neon-colored billboards and the clanking and whirring of construction sounds.

Yet sandwiched in between two buildings — both over 10 stories tall with large glass windows — a sliver of a mural offers some tranquillity, peeking through the noise and the lights.

The mural, which depicts a New York cityscape through venetian blinds, is the work of SuZen, a 78-year-old multimedia artist who received a $10,000 public grant for the piece in 1984. At the time, the building was home to the notorious Show World Center, one of the city’s largest sex emporiums that offered adult DVDs and peep shows. The shop has been described as “the McDonald’s of Sex,” and for decades stood as a vestige of Times Square’s gritty past.

SuZen never stepped foot inside, never saw a shimmy or rented a video, but because “the image has these blinds that you’re looking through,” a business that hosted peep shows “seemed like a good match,” she said. “It made me chuckle.” The piece — based on a photograph SuZen took from a beauty salon in Manhattan and translated into a mural by Jeffrey Greene, the founder of EverGreene Painting Studios — stood as a faux window on Show World, even after owners began converting the building into offices in 2018.

Then last fall, SuZen noticed that a taller building went up directly adjacent to it, rendering her mural nearly invisible.