"The Open Secret," a series of bronze reliefs mounted on the mezzanine level, was the first MTA Arts & Design commissioned work in the subway, and it presents many of artist Houston Conwill's longstanding thematic concerns: community, history, and the creation of sacred spaces as each relates to the African American experience and quest for equality. "The Open Secret" holds mysteries, and viewers can look inside at the objects within. Two triangular sections serve as a time capsule of life in Harlem in the 1980s. "The exploration might be of a place or into our own minds where we find eternal secrets that are saved and put in the time capsules for our children and their children," Conwill said.

Houston Eugene Conwill (1947-2016) was born in 1947, in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated from Howard University in 1973 with a BFA and received an MFA from the University of Southern California. Conwill was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. Conwill’s best known work is his 1992 memorial to Langston Hughes and Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center.