Jane Golden was in a coffee shop, describing how murals sometimes get lost to construction, when a young woman approached and politely interrupted her.
“Are you Jane Golden?” she asked. “I just want to say thank you for everything you do for the community.”
“That really makes my day, thank you so much,” Golden replied.
That kind of thing happens to her a lot, Golden said. As the executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Golden has been the program’s tireless leader since its inception as the Anti-Graffiti Network. She went from being a muralist tasked with keeping young people from writing on walls to a recognizable champion of public art.
From its origins in 1984, working with graffiti artists to engage them in public art, the organization has evolved, expanding as its influence grew, creating more programming and building connections. Mural Arts has placed thousands of murals across the city, giving Philadelphia the unofficial moniker “mural capital of the world.” The tours that the organization runs attract more than 10,000 people annually. And after four decades, Mural Arts is trying to do even more.
“The work just grew, grew, grew, and our ambition grew, to make sure every neighborhood had art,” Golden said.
Many a mural starts as an empty wall facing a vacant lot or at the end of a line of row homes. A wealth of those walls has allowed Mural Arts to turn Philadelphia into what Golden called “an outdoor museum,” bolstered by the city’s walkability and the prominent art institutions that have partnered with Mural Arts.
“Philly is the Goldilocks city,” said Conrad Benner, who is the founder and editor of the blog Streets Dept and a project manager for Mural Arts. “We have the architecture for murals and we’re not filling every inch of wall space with ads.”
Plus, street art catches the eye. People will show their love for art by posting photos on Instagram, Benner said. “Almost more than anything,” he said, “social media has really affected how some of these institutions respect and understand the power of street art, because they got to see how much people really like it.”
Having documented Philadelphia street art on Streets Dept for more than 14 years, Benner now helps Mural Arts recruit new artists.
In its 40 years, the program has worked with approximately 6,000 artists. Golden isn’t sure how many murals have been made in that time — a few are lost each year to development, but others are continually added — but there are between 4,000 and 4,500 murals around the city, according to Mural Arts.
That scale has attracted attention from other cities, like Chicago and Detroit.
“Every single day,” Benner said, “there are city leaders from across the country, talking to Mural Arts about how to do what we do here, there.”
The interest led Mural Arts to establish the Mural Arts Institute to share what the organization has learned in Philadelphia and to offer resources and training.
The Institute is one of several programs run by Mural Arts. The Restorative Justice program partners with SCI Phoenix, a state prison in the region, to paint on pieces of polytab mural cloth. (Murals can be painted directly on walls or painted on polytab and adhered.) The Art Education program allows students to help with murals, and there is a fellowship for Black artists. Neighborhood storefronts offer art classes and, recently, the organization began workshops to help artists deal with taxes, studio space and other aspects of the profession.
“It shouldn’t be a tool of gentrification,” Golden said of the work. “Instead, it should be about the health and well-being and life of our city — all of our city, not just part of it.”
Because of the organization’s longevity, artists have had the ability to grow and develop their work. Dom Lyner started with Mural Arts by helping paint a mural at his high school in 2015. As a teenager who liked to draw, he enjoyed being a part of a project in his community, having his opinions heard and seeing the process from beginning to end. Now, as a teaching artist, he strives to make sure the teenagers he works with have that same experience.
“I think high-school me would think that’s pretty cool,” he said.
Sammy Kovnat — or SKOVeS, as she signs her work — first worked with Mural Arts in 2017 as a summer intern. In September, she finished her first solo mural.
An image of a broken porcelain plate against a wallpaper-like background with pomegranates, it’s a personal piece inspired by Kovnat’s family and her work as a mosaic artist. Even the mural’s technique, which involved painting on sections of polytab and hanging it on the wall, held personal significance — her grandfather and uncle were wallpaper hangers.
Up on a lift, on full display as she painted out the seams of the panels, she made sure to talk to passers-by and answer their questions about the mural. “Hearing about it from the artist makes them feel like they are a part of it,” she said, “so it makes them embrace the art even more.”
Contrary to the image of an artist working in solitude, mural painting is inherently social. Chris Murray, a local artist, crossed the street with his dog, Reggie, to watch Kovnat work. “Artists are trapped in the studio most of the time,” he said. “Painting murals gets you outside.”
Kovnat’s was one of a flurry of new murals that went up as part of Mural Arts’ 40th anniversary. In West Philadelphia, work began on the city’s first permanent voting mural, a nonpartisan project harnessing the social media power of murals to celebrate and encourage civic engagement.
There are freshly painted walls honoring the basketball coach Dawn Staley, the singer Jill Scott and the baseball player Dick Allen, who spent much of his career with the Phillies. Another honored Tiffany Fletcher, a recreation center worker killed by a stray bullet in 2022, with her portrait on the wall of the building renamed for her.
Because Mural Arts works closely with communities, the organization often takes its cues from what people want in their neighborhoods, whether it’s an image of Mount Kilimanjaro or a tribute to a friend lost too soon. Mural Arts often hosts community paint days, and the organization has a long waiting list of requests for neighborhood murals.
“Murals do have this beautiful power to bring us all together,” Kovnat said, “because you can’t do them alone.”
The post A City of Murals, Decades in the Making appeared first on New York Times.
