Civic Views
A project by Emilio Martínez Poppe
MAY 23 – JUNE 11, 2025
A timely and ambitious public artwork highlighting Philadelphia’s municipal workers and their perspectives on the city will be on view in the City Hall Courtyard.
Civic Views is a temporary public art project celebrating the city’s municipal employees and their diverse perspectives on Philadelphia through poetic documentation of their office windows. The project represents the culmination of two years of Emilio Martínez Poppe photographing and interviewing staff from an array of Philadelphia civic agencies. Presented in Philadelphia’s City Hall Courtyard, Civic Views is accompanied by a robust series of public programs highlighting the work of scholars, labor organizers, elected officials, and city employees as they articulate the importance of the public sector. The project’s centerpiece, an expansive installation of photographs, text, and scaffolding, will be on view in the City Hall Courtyard from May 23 – June 11, 2025.
Civic Views combines photographs of city government office windows and excerpts from interviews with a wide range of civil servants to map their diverse views on a changing Philadelphia. Photographs are reproduced at a 1-to-1 scale and hung to exact specifications that replicate the experience of looking out of each window, opening these tucked-away offices to the public’s view. The photographs are paired with a selection of anonymous interview excerpts on text panels that highlight the pride, complexity, and even contradictions endemic to public sector work. The interviews chart how employees came to work for city government, reflections on the work they perform, how family and friends perceive their careers, and their wishes for Philadelphia and its citizens. These elements are mounted on a series of scaffolding armatures that create an abstracted map of Philadelphia and orient the public to where these buildings are located across the city. Taken together, the project endeavors to humanize the public sector while using scaffolding to symbolize the public attitudes and urban landscape that are constantly changing in the background of the city government’s work.
In a moment when the public sector is increasingly vulnerable to scrutiny, restructuring, and privatization, Civic Views champions the people, buildings, and ethics that keep city government running. The project seeks to shake off a monolithic view of government to better understand it at a human scale, hoping to reignite a deep value for what we call “public.” Like many of Mural Arts Philadelphia’s projects, Civic Views presents thoughtful ways for experiencing public art as an interdisciplinary effort engaged in many conversations at once—history, urbanism, photography, architecture, civil service, and public space.
The full scope of the project includes visits to over twenty municipal agencies, over thirty staff interviews and over forty window views. The project has been produced in close collaboration with the City of Philadelphia, which has graciously opened its doors to Martínez Poppe’s camera and microphone.
After its debut in the City Hall Courtyard, a selection of Civic Views photographs will migrate across the street to long-term public view at the Municipal Services Building’s Concourse Level in partnership with the Department of Public Property. The project will also lead to a substantial book documenting the full index of photographs Martínez Poppe captured, as well as essays from leading artists, scholars, and the project’s organizers exploring art’s relationship to the city. The book project will be announced with additional details later this year.
Civic Views is organized by Jameson Paige, Curator of Public Practice.
City Agencies included in Civic Views
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
City Archives
City Planning Commission
Creative Philadelphia
Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services
Department of Parks and Recreation
Department of Public Property
Department of Revenue
Department of Streets (Sanitation)
District Attorney’s Office
Fire Department
Free Library of Philadelphia
Office of Children and Families
Office of Economic Opportunity
Office of the Mayor
Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability
Philadelphia City Council
Philadelphia Housing Authority
Philadelphia Police Department
Philadelphia Water Department
School District of Philadelphia
Civic Views Public Programming
Opening Reception
Friday, May 23 | 12 PM – 3 PM | City Hall Courtyard
Speaking program and performance by the Municipal Employees Choral Ensemble. Light lunch will be served in celebration of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
Civic Views: The Image of the City
Wednesday, May 28 | 5:30 PM–7 PM | City Hall Courtyard
A conversation on photography’s relationship to the public’s imagination of the urban landscape, local photographic history, and the diverse powers of representation. This talk will include Dr. Michelle Smiley, Curator of Photography at the Library of Congress and Dr. LaCharles Ward, Curator of Photography and Film at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Michelle Smiley is a scholar of 19th-century photography and visual culture whose research investigates the intersection of aesthetics and scientific practice in the antebellum United States. Her current book project, Daguerreian Democracy: Art, Science, and Politics in Antebellum American Photography, examines how the daguerreotype became an object of technological, scientific, and commercial innovation for antebellum scientists, artisans, and political thinkers. By chronicling the contributions of these often-overlooked actors, she explores how the daguerreotype was an object of transatlantic scientific experimentation, a key component of government projects of nation-building, as well as an object of fascination for theorists of democracy. Before coming to Rutgers, Michelle held the Wyeth Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C. She holds an A. B., M.A. and Ph.D. in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College.
LaCharles Ward, Ph.D., is Supervisory Museum Curator of Photography and Film and Director of the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA). Dr. Ward is a cultural theorist of African American photography and scholar of Black visual culture, which includes film, video, and media arts across the Black diaspora. His writings on photography, legal history, and Black people’s relationship to law have appeared in museum catalogues and journals such as Black Camera and the History of Photography. He continues to present research at conference associations such as the American Studies Association and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies as well as at convenings focused on photography more specifically. Prior to the Smithsonian, Dr. Ward was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA where he researched and drafted forthcoming book projects related to law (specifically, evidence law), photography, and Black Life. He received his PhD from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) in Rhetoric and Public Culture, with graduate certificates in African American Studies and concentrations in film theory, history of photography, and cultural studies.
Civic Views: Public Sector Office Workshop
Friday, May 30, | 5 PM–6:30 PM | City Hall Courtyard
Public Sector Office, a self-organized group of public sector employees who collectively document uncanny government office spaces, will lead a workshop for local civil servants. The workshop will welcome reflection on each participant’s findings of eccentric and idiosyncratic artifacts in government offices, using the Civic Views photographic installation at City Hall as a jumping off point. Participants will have a chance to connect with one another across government bureaucracies and inspect the exhibit for tensions that arise in public sector spaces. The workshop will be followed by a happy hour at Drury Beer Garden.
RSVP on Partiful
Casey Peterson is an urban planner with experience working in the public and non-profit sector in New York City. She is currently a Senior Project Manager at Hester Street. Casey launched the Instagram account @publicsectoroffice in 2018 with her friend Justin as a coping mechanism for their experience working in government office buildings. She continues to administer the account with delight, receiving submissions on a daily basis from public servants across North America. Casey earned a Masters in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a B.A. in Architectural Studies from Middlebury College.
Lucas Teixeira Vaqueiro is a civic designer and researcher with a particular focus on the local level and a deep fascination with bureaucratic systems. He is currently a Program Strategist at 3×3 and an instructor at Parsons School of Design. While working for the São Paulo City Hall, Lucas and his friends created the @esteticadaburocracia Instagram account, a collaborative project for collecting, registering, and appreciating the public sector offices around Brazil. Lucas holds an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design and a B.A. in International Relations from the University of São Paulo.
City Hall Serenade
Monday, June 2 | 12 PM – 12:30 PM | City Hall Courtyard
Performance by members of the Municipal Employees Choral Ensemble.
Civic Views: The Form of the City
Wednesday, June 4 | 5:30 PM–7 PM | City Hall Courtyard
A conversation between State Senator Nikil Saval and art and urban studies scholar Dr. Shannon Mattern on the architecture, design, and infrastructure of the city. They will discuss the reflexive relationship between spaces of civil servant work, the maintenance and delivery of public services, and the shifting perception of the public sector.
Shannon Mattern is currently the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Media Studies, with a secondary appointment in History of Art, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She is currently serving as the Kluge Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress, a position nominated by the Librarian of Congress. Mattern is also the Director of Creative Research at the Metropolitan New York Library Council, a state-funded, member-supported, non-profit network connecting hundreds of libraries and archives; she previously served on Metro’s board of directors and later as its president. Prior to Mattern’s arrival at Penn, she worked for 18.5 years at The New School, in New York, where she served on the faculty in both the Department of Anthropology and the School of Media Studies. Mattern’s writing and teaching focus on archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; sites where data intersect with art and design; and media that shape our sensory experiences. She is the author of four books: The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities; Deep Mapping the Media City; and Code and Clay, Dirt and Data: 5000 Years of Urban Media (winner of the Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture from the Media Ecology Association), all published by the University of Minnesota Press; and A City Is Not a Computer, published by Princeton University Press in 2021. She also (co-)edited four collections on urban technology and quotidian media practices (“Media Study Beyond Media Studies: Pandemic Lessons for an Evolving Field,” “Digital Frictions” (with Mariana Mogilevich and Josh McWhirter), How to Run a City Like Amazon (with Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin, and Joe Shaw), and “Notes, Lists & Everyday Inscriptions”).
Senator Nikil Saval is a writer, and organizer representing Pennsylvania’s First Senatorial District, which lies in the heart of Philadelphia. Saval’s commitment to solidarity and justice for working people, and his skill at coalition building, carried him from his roots as a labor organizer to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, where he currently serves as Democratic Chair of the Senate’s Urban Affairs & Housing Committee and Chair of the Senate’s Philadelphia Delegation. Saval has focused his legislative work on critical response to Pennsylvania’s ongoing housing, mass incarceration, wage, and climate crises, while simultaneously pushing for deep structural change so that communities across the Commonwealth have the resources and support they need to thrive. One of his important legislative victories is the groundbreaking Whole-Home Repairs Program, which establishes a one-stop shop for home repairs and weatherization in each county in Pennsylvania while building up a local workforce and creating new, family-sustaining jobs in a growing field. As a writer, Saval has published extensively in The New York Times and The New Yorker, covering architecture, design, and housing. Saval previously served as co-editor of the literary journal n+1 and currently serves on its board of directors. In 2014, Saval published his book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, in which he examined the long-term evolution of the office from its roots in 19th century counting houses all the way to the cubicle, ultimately presenting a world in which workplaces, and the lives of the workers within them, can be improved in the future. Saval has continued to write while in office. A recent op-ed features his analysis of Pennsylvania’s bloated criminal legal system. After the death of Daniel Ellsberg, Saval reflected on his life and political legacy in an article in n+1.
City Hall Serenade
Monday, June 9 | 12 PM – 12:30 PM | City Hall Courtyard
Performance by members of the Municipal Employees Choral Ensemble.
Panel Discussion: The Labor of the City and Closing Reception
Wednesday, June 11 | 5:30 PM – 8 PM | City Hall Courtyard
A conversation championing the work of public sector employees led by labor organizer Paul Prescod and Librarian Julie Zaebst. Conversation is followed by a Closing Reception for Civic Views, including a brief speaking program and performance by the Municipal Employees Choral Ensemble.
Paul Prescod is an organizer with Teamsters for a Democratic Union and Jacobin contributing editor. He also serves on the board of Labor Notes.
Julie Zaebst is an adult and teen librarian at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Zaebst was the Manager of the Clara Bell Duvall Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU). Her work focused on ensuring that incarcerated women have access to reproductive health services. Zaebst has held several other positions at the Coalition as well, most recently serving as Interim Executive Director. Previously, Julie worked in the fields of service-learning and child welfare. She holds masters degrees in social work and in law and social policy from Bryn Mawr College.
Read the blog about this project, which includes an interview with the artist.
About the Artist
Emilio Martínez Poppe is an artist who is concerned with the right to the city and the struggle of public memory. Through a social and research-led practice spanning photography, sculpture, text, and installations, he explores the spatial mechanisms and ideological conditions that reproduce state and capital infrastructures. Martínez Poppe has previously exhibited work at Petrine, Paris; the Queens Museum, New York; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia; and de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam. Martínez Poppe earned an MFA and MCP from the University of Pennsylvania, a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, was a studio fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program, and a member of BFAMFAPhD. He is a member of the Pinko collective and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Graduate Communications Design department at Pratt Institute. His work has been supported through artist residencies at Abrons Arts Center, Pratt Institute, NEW INC, SOMA Mexico, and through grants/fellowships from The Laundromat Project, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, PennPraxis, and the UPenn Graduate and Professional Student Assembly. Martínez Poppe received the Charles Addams Memorial Prize and the Paul Davidoff Award from the University of Pennsylvania.
For more information or inquiries on public programs, please contact Jameson Paige, Curator of Public Practice, at jameson.paige@muralarts.org
This project is funded by the City of Philadelphia and ArtBridge.
