It's big and mostly red and has been clearly visible on Fifth Avenue at 40th Street since early summer. But only yesterday did it get official recognition.
The stained glass window over the Mid-Manhattan Library's main entrance is the latest addition to the library, which has been growing and sprucing up since it occupied three floors of the site - formerly the Arnold Constable Department Store -in 1970. In 1982, all seven floors were renovated.
Richard Spaulding created the abstract, 124-square-foot window, which he believes is the first public art project to use stained glass in Manhattan in more than 50 years. Without sunlight, yesterday may not have been the best day to take an official first gaze at the work, but lots of people did, seated on rows of chairs inside the entrance during talks by officials including Vartan Gregorian, president of the New York Public Library, and Robert Wagner Jr., president of the city's Board of Education.
The artist, who approached librarians at Mid-Manhattan four years ago with a proposal for the work, said its geometric design symbolized ''the expansion of human perspective,'' adding that ''I think that is the same thing that the library is about.''