Lost in New Haven: Why a Manhattan Art Director Trusts ARTfx

The ARTfx Observer  |  June 2026

Robert S. Greenberg is a Rhode Island School of Design-trained artist who spent 26 years as an art director in New York City. He has worked with top-tier fabricators, and he does not hand his vision to just anyone. When he built Lost in New Haven, the immersive museum celebrating four centuries of the Elm City’s history, he needed a partner who could meet his standard. The video above is what happened when he found one.

A Designer’s Standard

Most testimonials come from happy clients. This one comes from a judge. Robert spent his career as an art director in Manhattan, working with the kind of shops that operate at the top of the trade. When he came home to New Haven and started building his museum, he tried a local sign company first. It did not work out.

Then he found ARTfx. In his words, the level of professionalism was the New York standard he was used to, and the work showed a degree of accuracy he had only seen in New York City. That is the whole point of this piece. Robert is not easy to please. His endorsement is the kind of proof that means something to the architects, designers, and museum directors who choose a fabricator on behalf of their own clients.

The Sign on the Building

Robert came to ARTfx with a logo that was, by his own description, a challenge. He wanted the letters to stand independent, a grid to float behind them, and a pin to project out over the sign as a three-dimensional element. When he presented it to ARTfx founder Lawrin Rosen, the answer was not a list of reasons it could not be done. It was, “we can do that.”

The result is the identity sign on the front of 80 Hamilton Street: seamless, friction-fit channel letters, a floating grid, and a glowing red acrylic ball that serves as the head of a 54-inch pin, locating the museum on a stylized map of New Haven’s central core. The orb was fabricated from scratch in the ARTfx shop. The day it was installed, Robert started getting phone calls from people who said they had never seen a sign like it.

Restoring the Collection

The sign out front is only the entrance. Inside, the museum is a dense, layered collection, and as it grew, Robert kept finding historic signs that needed rehabilitation. ARTfx has restored and rebuilt those pieces, from neon to channel letters, so they read on the floor the way they were meant to when they were new. Robert’s go-to is Dan, who he describes as the person who comes up with the solutions, with Lawrin backing the harder calls. The through-line, in Robert’s telling, is that ARTfx never says a thing cannot be done. They treat it as a challenge and then solve it.

See the Work