“Looking Forward/Looking Back” by Nancy O’Neill at the Levine Museum.

Transportation – it moves us forward toward some destination, some goal, or maybe someone. We hear this word, and we think about the future and what is ahead. Rarely do we hear this word and think about what gets left behind or the past. But in a way that is exactly what the Queen City’s new Gold Line streetcar project will do – link the past with the present and beyond.

This LYNX transit project revives a historical mode of transportation in Charlotte, the streetcar, while improving city transportation, moving people forward and connecting communities along East Trade Street. The artwork commissioned for this project also plays on this theme. Titled “Looking Forward/Looking Back,” artist Nancy O’Neill has designed collages for 12 Gold Line passenger shelters that combine documents and photographs from important events, people and places of Charlotte’s past. The collages will be encased in the glass windscreens of the shelters like a permanent city-wide family album.

The Gold Line streetcar is currently in phase I of its construction, which will complete 1.5 miles of a 10 mile line. Phase I is scheduled for completion in March 2015, but you do not have to wait until March to see “Looking Forward/Looking Back” by O’Neill. The Levine Museum of the New South has the collages on display now until March 30, 2015.

Incorporating art into public transportation is a significant component of the Charlotte Area Transit System’s goals to improve the region’s quality of life and develop a livable and sustainable community of riders and non-riders. One percent of design and construction costs are devoted to the integration of art into public transportation as an effort to create vibrant, neighborhood-oriented transit facilities.

“Looking Forward/Looking Back” by Nancy O’Neill at Levine Museum.

“The visual quality of the nation’s mass transit system has a profound impact on transit patrons and the community at large. Good design and art can improve the appearance and safety of a facility, give vibrancy to its public spaces, and make patrons feel welcome,” the Federal Transit Administration policy states.

Levine Museum of the New South: 200 E. 7th St., Charlotte; 704-333-1887; museumofthenewsouth.org