Public Art: 81st Street Subway, American Museum of Natural History

The 81st Street--Museum of Natural History stop on the IND Eighth Avenue Line features an installation called For Want of a Nail. It was commissioned in 2000 by the MTA, which describes it like this:

In For Want of a Nail, the artist team used a variety of materials to suggest the range and diversity at the American Museum of Natural History, directly above the subway station.  glass mosaic, glass tile, ceramic tile, granite, and bronze relief are combined in ways that highlight the ten key disciplines at the Museum.  The mosaics represent extinct and living animals, the former in grey and the latter in color.  The work assembles images from outer space to the earth's core and from the first organisms to emerge to mammals of today. The artwork was a collaboration between MTA Arts for Transit and the Museum.  For Want of a Nail, the title of an old proverb, asks the viewer to consider the way everything is connected.

There are good pictures of the installation here and here.