Have friends with empty coffee tables? Here’s a selection of New York holiday gift books.
“Art touches our souls because it comes from our souls,” Stanley Tucci, the actor, writes in the foreword to “New York’s Underground Art Museum: M.T.A. Art and Design” (Monacelli Press), by Sandra Bloodworth and William Ayres, an illustrated tour of the transit system’s public art program advocated by the former Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member Ronay Menschel.
“It has been said that this program is trying to save the soul of the subway,” Mr. Tucci writes. “In doing so it may be saving a piece of ours as well.” Works in this expanded edition range from Heins & La Farge’s 1904 terra-cotta beavers at Astor Place to Sarah Sze’s maquette for the new Second Avenue subway.
