There’s always lots of great art to see in Boston. It’s a city that’s been occasionally very good to the artists who live there, which is to say, better than most places. The very cultured population does take pride in its joy and appreciation for the finer things in life, and art is something that makes the daily grind bearable, and the bigger questions in life more beautiful. A visitor to a Boston hotel can have reasonably high expectations if galleries and museums are on the itinerary. Its art scene is very much a living thing, and artists from all over the world continue to come to the city, looking for ways of expression their visions.

Boston’s support for visual art is demonstrated by its palpable presence in the city. It’s not just visible above ground, or enshrined inside the white walls of the gallery, either. In 1979, when the Red Line was extended, the Cambridge Arts Council started working with the MTBA toward getting public art installed in each of the nine stations. These efforts are still visible today, although some of the work has suffered the wear one might expect in a high-frequency area with a lot of steel and exhaust.

It’s still a magnificent effort, and there is a new program in place where benefactors of all walks of life can opt to renovate the work of their choice, called “Adopt the Arts.” The original idea, however, is still a remarkable one, and points to a certain historical breakthrough in public art projects . The idea was to bring art to people’s lives every day, to really hit them where they live. Putting works by great local and international artists is just one way of making the population aware that they are in the midst of a flurry of human creativity, and the city of Boston is the canvas.