New Yorkers who use public transportation have long enjoyed the art they see on their commutes, but they have rarely had a chance to linger over it.

Now subterranean art is finally getting its day in the sun. “Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit,” an exhibit opening today at the UBS Art Gallery, offers visitors a glimpse into the history of the permanent art installations inside the city’s subway stations and at stops along the Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road lines. There are 153 in all, spread among the system’s 713 stations.

The exhibit highlights 50 artworks created in the last 10 years. Samples, artists’ sketches, and large-scale photographs of the installations – which, as riders know, include mosaics, sculptures, and glassworks – are on display. A small drawing in colored pencil by Roy Lichtenstein is an early plan for a 53-foot-long mural in the Times Square subway station. A huge painting by Al Held of brightly colored geometric shapes became a glowing mosaic at another stop.

“The artist is central to these commissions,” Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Arts for Transit Program, said recently. “Once he or she has been selected, we do everything we can to make the pieces exactly as they want them.” This can include creating numerous sample mosaics in a variety of styles, so an artist has a clear sense of what the full-scale piece will look like. Most artists closely monitor the entire process.

The MTA began commissioning work in 1985, after Congress passed the Percent for Arts bill, which allots a portion of all funds used for the construction of public buildings to arts projects to accompany them. The first piece commissioned was a bronze relief designed by Houston Conwill for the 125th Street station on the East Side.

The selection process is highly competitive. The organization’s board begins by drawing up a long list of names and then winnows it down to four or five candidates, who are asked to submit full-scale proposals. Everything from materials to lighting conditions must be considered.

Ms. Bloodworth stressed that each piece should evoke the spirit of its surroundings. “There’s an underlying connectivity to all of the works in that they’re about the place where they’re located, and they represent the ridership.” George Trakas’s “Hook, Line, and Sinker,” for example, is a boat-shaped gantry at the Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street stop on the Long Island Rail Road. It is suspended in the sky lighted ceiling by steel beams that reach from the avenue side to the street side of the station, providing a symbolic connection between those two oceans, Ms. Bloodworth noted.

Arts for Transit is currently working on about 40 new projects. “We continue to push against what we know we can do,” Ms. Bloodworth said. “The goal is the rehabilitation of every station – and when you rehabilitate, you have art.”

Today through Friday, September 9, Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m., UBS Art Gallery, 1285 Sixth Ave., between 51st and 52nd streets, 212-713-2885, free. Note: The gallery will be closed Monday, July 4.