More than a site of modernist original sin or a relic of urban ruination, the Cross Bronx Expressway is a material fact: a heavily trafficked and polluting roadway running within half a mile of more than 200,000 Bronx residents. This exhibition presents images and experiences from the neighborhoods that line it—original photography by Abigail Montes alongside newly collected oral histories—to move beyond abstract and technical understandings of the highway and its effects. As efforts to redress and repair the harms of this road and its kin across the country gain traction, apprehending contemporary conditions and needs are a critical first step. Produced in partnership with the New York City Department of City Planning, this exhibition is presented at a series of institutions along the Cross Bronx corridor. It is a tool for public understanding and an invitation to imagine and demand ambitious and expansive visions for the future.

Mariana Mogilevich is editor in chief of Urban Omnibus (UO), where she creates overall editorial strategy, commissions and works with contributors, and develops special projects. Mogilevich has conceptualized and edited a number of thematic series on UO, including The Location of Justice and Cleaning Up? A historian of architecture and urbanism, her research focuses on the design and politics of the public realm. Her book The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) received a 2021 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies. Mogilevich was most recently the curator of Streets in Play: Katrina Thomas, NYC Summer 1968 at New York City Parks' flagship Arsenal Gallery, and has developed exhibitions and other public projects on the urban environment for the National Parks Service, the New-York Historical Society, and Place Matters.

Abigail Montes is a documentary photographer, educator, and youth arts coordinator from the South Bronx. She graduated from LaGuardia Community College with an associate’s degree in applied science degree in commercial photography. Since 2013, she has worked with various initiatives empowering youth through image making. In 2018, she completed the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism One-Year Certificate Program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and was awarded the Documentary Arts Fellowship. In 2019, Montes became the co-coordinator and lab manager of ICP at THE POINT, a youth photo program based in the neighborhood where she grew up and centers her documentary practice. In 2021, she earned a BFA in photography from Saint John’s University. Montes is a lead instructor for ICP’s Community Programs, teaching the fundamentals of photography with social justice, self-esteem, community, and collaboration as thematic anchors. Montes’ work is featured in Living Legend.

Elizabeth Hamby is an artist who serves as the director of civic engagement at the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP). Hamby’s work is focused on fostering innovation and continuous improvement in DCP’s work engaging New Yorkers in planning for the future of their neighborhoods and the city as a whole. For more than 20 years, Hamby has worked across grassroots, nonprofit, and governmental organizations to help people work together and lift the lid on their collective imagination. She currently leads DCP’s community engagement strategy for Reimagine the Cross Bronx, which is focused on maximizing opportunities for Bronxites and other stakeholders to effectively participate in shaping the future of the Cross Bronx corridor.

Jacob R. Moore is the executive director of The Architectural League of New York, where he serves as publisher of Urban Omnibus. Previously, Moore worked as the associate director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University and as an editor at Princeton Architectural Press. At the Buell Center, Moore cocurated a number of exhibitions, including Living in America: Frank Lloyd Wright, Harlem, and Modern Housing, a collaborative initiative with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Wallach Gallery at Columbia University, and House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate. House Housing was a multi-year, traveling exhibition that involved partnerships with institutions that ranged from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, among many others. Moore was also an early project leader for 100 Links, a Buell Center exhibition produced together with AD—WO for the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Founded in 1881, The Architectural League of New York supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. As a vital, independent forum, the League stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today’s converging crises of racism, inequity, and climate change, in service of a more livable and just world. Urban Omnibus is The Architectural League’s online publication dedicated to observing, understanding, and shaping the city. We raise new questions, illuminate diverse perspectives, and document creative projects to advance the collective work of citymaking.