Painting Philadelphia

Associated media

Philadelphia is the mural capital of the world

Karen Hasin-Bromley reports from America's fifth-largest city

Philadelphia, America’s fifth-largest city, prides itself on its public art.  In 1872 the Fairmount Art Association was the first private body in the US to focus on integrating art into public planning. It continues to commission works and claims there are 1,700 pieces in the city and its network of 63 neighbourhood and regional parks. Philadelphia was also the first American city to legislate a percentage garnish on development projects, which has resulted in the siting of more than 200 works. The streets and other public spaces of Philadelphia contain pieces by Oldenburg, Remington and Calder, among almost 400 artists.

Philadelphia is also considered to be the mural capital of the world. Its Mural Arts Program (MAP) is the largest public arts programme in the USA.  It is responsible for the creation of over 3,000 murals throughout the city.

Begun in 1984, originally as an anti-graffiti measure, the murals have since become an element of active community engagement.  The MAP describes them as being ‘a catalyst for positive social change and a model for community development across the country and around the globe’. Hence they are not merely objects for beautification and edification based on passive viewing.

These works sit within a broader US tradition of murals painted to record history and celebrate local culture, which goes back to the Progressive Era in the first decade of the 20th century. During the great depression of the 1930s and 1940s, under the Federal Art Project, instigated by Franklin D Roosevelt, unemployed artists were paid to paint murals in post offices across the USA.  One such post office mural was painted in Philadelphia by Robert E. Lartner. These murals had to follow government guidelines and usually depicted local town history. Then in the 1960s and ’70s community murals were made in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Santa Fe.  In 1973 the Philadelphia Museum of Art  launched the Department of Urban Outreach, a predecessor to the current programme.

The Philadelphia murals have certainly added colour, beauty, and a focus to an industrial city that has been struggling with decades of economic distress and population loss.

Philadelphia’s integrated street layouts and distinctive neighbourhoods make the city an amenable background for large wall paintings.  Known as the ‘city of neighbourhoods’, Philadelphia has businesses, shops and cafes, side by side with places of worship and living accommodation.  Scattered though the city, at the ends of blocks, there are gable walls adjacent to small car parks, community gardens, or just empty lots.  These gable walls provide large flat surface areas for the murals and the adjoining spaces provide easy public access for viewing them.

Philadelphia’s murals have become big business, with books, audio tour narratives downloadable via cell phone or podcasts, and a variety of themed guided public tours.

The murals are considered to be public art but their designs reflect the individual communities they embellish so without informed knowledge of the creation and contexts of the images, their meanings can be difficult to decipher. They contain ‘insider’ references and jokes, and  histories and allusions to economic and social conditions.

The private stories behind each mural can be as fascinating as the murals themselves and have become a form of recording the histories of the communities around them.  They often depict traditional themes, commemorating historical events, places, people and activities. Communities looking to ‘clean up’ locations such as street corners and empty lots campaign for murals. They act as memorials, celebrate the arts, and provide sophisticated signposts and advertising.  A number of the murals are site reflective. There are also murals which have a specific personal dimension, such as the Love Letters series, and some which are just whimsical.

There is no publicly accessible comprehensive listing of the murals. Since 1998 a website has archived photographs and information about Philadelphia’s public art – ‘772 sculptures, fountains, mosaics and memorials’, but no murals. The Fairmount Park Association has an online tour of ‘a sample’ of public art with which it is associated. The Mural Arts Program itself posts details of only some of its ‘biggest and most ambitious projects’ on its website.

There is really only one way to explore the murals fully – by personal observation on the streets of the city. Since one of the main purposes of the programme is the rehabilitation of disadvantaged neighbourhoods and areas, that can mean entering some of Philadelphia’s more dangerous locations. On the other hand, there are so many works that a bus, trolley or train ride can pass by a number of clearly visible pieces.

As artworks, the murals exist somewhere between the permanence of formal statuary and the transitoriness of street art. A number have disappeared through wear and tear or been obliterated by development. It has been more common, however, to repair and restore them, and MAP has now launched a restoration fund with that in mind. In more upscale neighbourhoods, murals may be regarded as status symbols. In 2011, residents in one area protested against the proposed destruction ofAutumn, one of four murals depicting the seasons, painted a decade earlier. One local called it ‘a source of pride’.

Most murals are formally identified, salon-like, with labels indicating the name of the work, the artist and the completion date. The works are often created by a kind of studio system with schoolchildren, prisoners, community members and random volunteers, who remain anonymous, working under the guidance of the artists. Originally, these were former graffiti-ists who were persuaded to hand in their spray cans. There are currently four muralists employed full-time by MAP. The scale of the programme has made investment in innovative techniques and specialist materials viable. A modestly sized mural can cost between $30,000 and $50,000 to create. Donors sometimes appear in the works. And the tendency is to ever-larger size and visibility: one of the latest murals, at the city’s airport, extends over 85,000 square feet (7,900 sq. m).

All these factors – exemplified by the ‘Love Letters’ project – have led to enhancing a sense of permanence. ‘Love Letters’ extends to 50 works by Steve Powers, who turned from graffiti to studio in 2000, and which cost at least $260,000. Powers developed his ideas from sectarian political murals he saw in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Love Letter concept has since been exported to Brooklyn and Syracuse, NY, and to Brazil.

The MAP claims that the murals have been successful in deterring graffiti, and certainly it is rare to find any that have been defaced. On the other hand, there appears to be little demonstrable evidence of their positive impact on economic and social deprivation through restoring public spaces in the city’s most troubled areas. The programme has been criticized for a lack of urban renewal vision.  There certainly seems to be a current focus on aesthetics, although it is also claimed that the programme has put ‘beauty and reprieve from the permeation of urban decay’ back into situations previously characterized only by ‘corrosion and collapse’.

No individual sample can adequately capture the range of styles, topics, techniques and expression of 3,000-plus works, which are chiefly connected by no more than inclusion in the programme.

The selection on the lightbox above is just a taster and is based on personal preference.

Gimmie Shelter,   David Guinn 2001, 1236 Lombard Street. 

Gimme Shelter is painted on the side of the wall of the local animal shelter, the Morris Animal Refuge.  The shelter was going to be closed down but a raffle was held to raise money to keep it open.  The prize for the winning tickets was to have your animal painted in the mural.  Enough money was raised and the shelter is still open.

Taste of Summer, Ann Northrup 2009, 1312 Spruce Street

Painted on the side of an Italian restaurant, the scene of a feast in idealized Italianate countryside spills over on to the side wall to reveal a chef walking towards the scene carrying a basket.   It seems that the owner of the building and the owner of the restaurant were in dispute so the owner would not give permission for the chef to appear on the mural. To overcome this, the artist included the chef out of sight of the main mural.  Above the chef to the left is a trompe d’oeil window with a small girl staring out.  The attendant at the parking lot was from Africa. He missed his daughter who was back in his home country and carried a picture of her.  When the mural was being painted he mentioned this to the artist and showed her the picture.  She then painted his daughter into the picture so he could look at her everyday while he was at work.

Mapping Courage Honouring W.E.B. Du Bois and Engine 11, Willis Humphrey 2008, 6th and South Street

This mural is in honour of DuBois and his work in Philadelphia.  In 1886 he was commissioned by the University of Philadelphia to write a sociological study of Philadelphia’s 7th Ward, a predominantly African American community. The mural is part of a larger University of Pennsylvania initiative to inform people about his work, using GIS mapping techniques.  The mural, which is located a few blocks from the home of Engine 11, also honours the fire fighters of Engine 11, established in 1871. From 1919 to 1951 it was only fire station in the city to hire African Americans.

Philly Chunk Pack, Kenny Scharf  2011, 13th Street 2nd-storey building above Sampan

This mural is visible from the Gayborhood. Scharf explains that the mural is ‘Inspired by all the colourful characters in Philadelphia – there seem to be a lot of them here – and also by the wall itself and how it is viewed from the street’

The ‘Love Letter Murals’ are a series of 50 roof-top murals from 45th to 63rd Streets completed in February 2010 by the New York-based artist Steve Powers. He wished to pay tribute to Philadelphia, his home town, and to his idol ‘Cornbread’, who is credited with starting the graffiti culture in Philadelphia and who is famous for tagging walls with messages intended to attract the attention of a girl he liked.  There is a film about these murals, which is a combination of fact and fiction and tells the story of a prisoner who, released from prison, creates these murals to win back the woman he loves. 

The murals themselves often contain a play on words and many reflect the businesses that use the buildings. For instance, a camera appears on the depiction of a camera shop.  Their success is such that there is a waiting list of people who wish to employ Power’s to ‘decorate’ their outside walls. 

Opening these communities up to the public through these murals has provided Philadelphia with a way to introduce outsiders to areas of the city people would not normally find attractive.  Commercial benefits for the businesses in these areas and a sense of identity and pride for the neighbourhoods give credence to the claims of the regenerative and restorative power of art in public places.