Case study · Data Vandals × Metro Art · Union Station, Los Angeles · 2025–26
LA on the Move
A year-long exhibition in the Waiting Room Gallery at Union Station about how wildlife and people share Los Angeles.
- Union Station, Waiting Room Gallery
- Los Angeles, CA
- September 2025 – October 2026
The brief
For Metro Art, in collaboration with ArtCenter and Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy, Data Vandals created “LA on the Move”: a year-long public exhibition in the Union Station Waiting Room Gallery about the vital role urban wildlife plays in keeping the LA region’s ecosystem healthy.
Coyotes, pumas, red-tailed hawks, California kingsnakes and monarch butterflies move through the same city as the commuters crossing the station. The show grew out of ArtCenter College of Design’s City Animals class and data from the Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy on sightings, migration and habitat corridors across LA County. The design took a year.
- Client
- Metro Art
- With
- ArtCenter College of Design · Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy
- Where
- Union Station, Waiting Room Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
- Dates
- September 2025 – October 2026
- Made by
- Data Vandals (Jen Ray and Jason Forrest)
01 · The animals
Animals and people, equal billing.
Five species carry the show, drawn as characters: a coyote who loves LA, a monarch inviting a partner to overwinter in Mexico, a kingsnake in an LA cap, a puma and a red-tailed hawk. Large cutouts sit on top of each wall, a nod to the Hollywood back lot, and the show has sound for the first time in a Data Vandals project: pumas, coyotes and hawks.
“We wanted to make sure that the animals and humans get equal time in this show.” Jen Ray
02 · The species chart
930 species in a California poppy.
The centerpiece, made with Paul Buffa, is a seven-by-ten-foot chart of 930 extinct, endangered and imperiled animal species in California, organized by class and phylum into the shape of the state flower. A Sankey compares California’s at-risk species with global standards, and a bar chart of imperiled species stands about seven and a half feet tall, so visitors measure themselves against it.
Explore image to see more
03 · The map
The whole county, wrapped around a corner.
A 3D map, made with Julian Hoffmann Anton, covers all of LA County and parts of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, and tracks sightings of the five species. Next to it, a panel tells the story of P-22, the mountain lion who lived in Griffith Park, with data on what rat poison does to pumas.
“I’ve never seen a map of this scale, physically, of this detail.” Jason Forrest
04 · The room
Colors from a historic building.
The palette comes from photographs of Union Station’s 1930s Art Deco tile floors, so the walls belong to the room they stand in. On the title wall, people do what animals do: an older man carries groceries home like a forager, a young woman carries flowers like a seed disperser.
LA on the Move by Data Vandals.
“It’s important to step away from the facts and the figures, and start talking to people.”
- Made by
- Data Vandals: Jen Ray and Jason Forrest.
- Species chart
- California Poppy dendrogram, collaboration with Paul Buffa.
- 3D map
- Collaboration with Julian Hoffmann Anton.
- With
- ArtCenter College of Design’s City Animals class (Santiago Lombeyda and Ivan Cruz) and the Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy.
- Photography
- Courtesy of Metro Art.