Mural Arts Program
25th Anniversary Celebration
25 Years of Mural Arts Program
1984
Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN) is founded by Mayor W. Wilson Goode. Established as part of a city wide anti-graffiti initiative, PAGN worked with young graffiti writers, redirecting their artistic energies into making art that would enhance rather than undermine their communities.
1985
PAGN paints its first mural, Life in the City, on a 636-foot span of the Spring Garden Street Bridge. Jane Golden and a crew of nearly 100 young people from Mantua paint day and night for four weeks to complete murals on both sides of this highway-and-pedestrian bridge linking West Philadelphia to Center City.
1987
PAGN begins its partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's (PHS) Philadelphia Green Program. As PHS' "Greene Country Towne" expands the PHS staffers bring PAGN artists along to negotiate murals for neighborhoods hardest hit by the city's industrial decline.
1989
Well-known portrait muralist Kent Twitchell comes to Philadelphia to paint the
1991
PAGN completes its 1,000th mural, Pathology of Devotion by Vincent Desiderio, at 12th & Morris Streets.
1992
Acclaimed artist Sidney Goodman paints Boy With Raised Arm. PAGN artists are thrilled to work with an artist of his stature. In 2002 the mural is obscured by new construction and a replacement mural is commissioned.
1996
The Mural Arts Program is born when PAGN is restructured and the mural program is transferred to the Department of Recreation.
1997
Philadelphia Mural Arts Advocates, a private non profit, is incorporated to advise and support the program.
The Mural Arts Program is asked to complete six major murals in less than eight weeks for the Presidential Summit on Volunteerism. Al and Tipper Gore join us and hundreds of volunteers to paint murals along Girard Avenue.
1998
Peace Wall is painted, amidst racial strife, in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Southwest Philadelphia. The mural helps divided residents find common ground through art and becomes a symbol of hope and unity.
Eight stories high, Common Threads by Meg Saligman is painted at Broad and Spring Garden Streets. The program's tallest mural at the time, it remains one of the most beloved.
1999
The Mural Arts Program implements Big Picture, an after-school and summer art education program for middle school youth.
2000
The Mural Arts Program completes its 2,000th mural, Liberty by Peter Pagast, at 15th & Arch Streets. The mural is an 11-story tall figure carrying the world.
2001
The Mural Arts Program becomes part of the city's social services division, the Department of Human Services, and begins working in homeless shelters, prisons, youth detention centers, and with adjudicated youth.
The Big Picture program expands from five to 20 sites, serving more than 200 children and teens.
2002
Mural Corps, an art education program designed to engage high-school youth in the mural-making process, completes three major sculpture gardens.
MAP begins mural workshops with inmates at the State Correctional Institute at Graterford, the sixth-largest maximum security prison in the country.
2003
Over 2,300 murals later, Philadelphia is known as America's "City of Murals."
Pride & Progress by Ann Northrup is completed. It is the nation's largest work of public art celebrating the LGBT community.
2004
The Mural Arts Program hosts the National Conference on Mural Art.
The Mural Arts Program embarks on My North Philly, a three-year initiative which celebrates the lives of North Philadelphia's diverse neighborhoods and culminate in a series of murals and a coffee table book of portraits and personal stories collected by an oral historian.
2005
In collaboration with the Lincoln Financial Group, the Mural Arts Program uses art to engage Philadelphia students in examining the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, creating a 10,000 square foot Venetian glass tile and painted mural, Legacy by Josh Sarantitis and Eric Okdeh.
The Mural Arts Program engages 26 schools across Pennsylvania in a state-wide mural-making project with each contributing an education-themed panel of a mural which is installed on the Department of Education building in Harrisburg.
2006
The Mural Arts Program facilitates Metamorphosis by Bob Phillips and Cheryl Levin, a series of fabricated steel sculptures and glass mosaics at Girard Crossing, our first major sculpture installation.
2007
Their Royal Highnesses Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall make an historic visit to Philadelphia and spend the afternoon with the Mural Arts Program, beginning with a personal viewing of Reading: A Journey at 40th and Pennsgrove in the East Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia. After meeting the individuals involved with the creation of the mural, they participated with Mural Arts Program youth and muralists in an interactive painting activity and spoke directly with community leaders and key participants involved in some of our most successful neighborhood transformation initiatives.
The Mural Arts Program hosts a national conference on Arts in Criminal Justice which attracts more than 300 individuals, representing 35 states and nine countries. Attendees spend one full day of the conference at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford to allow participation by incarcerated men involved with the Mural Arts Program's mural workshops there.
The Mural Arts Program embarks on its first youth-based international mural when youth from Big Picture collaborate with youth from the Dublin, Ireland-based Dophin Arts Group, resulting in the Common Ground: Global Heritage mural by James Burns which is installed on Olney High School West.
2008
The Mural Arts Program begins celebrating its 25th Anniversary Year!