Jane Golden

Jane Golden is the founder and executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia (Mural Arts). Under the driving force of Golden’s direction, Mural Arts has created more than 4,000 works of public art through innovative collaborations with community-based organizations, city agencies, nonprofit organizations, schools, the private sector, and philanthropies.

Through these partnerships, she has developed innovative and rigorous programs in youth art education, restorative justice, and behavioral health that have made it possible for thousands to experience and witness the power of art. She has also overseen a series of increasingly complex, ambitious, and award-winning public art projects, and is currently sought after nationally and internationally as an expert on urban transformation through art.

Golden has received numerous awards for her work, including the Pearl S. Buck International Woman of Influence Award, the Philadelphia Award, the Visionary Woman Award from Moore College of Art, Governor Shapiro’s 2025 Keystone Award, the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship Award, and Philadelphia Magazine’s Trailblazer Award, among others.

Her work is widely cited internationally, and she most recently contributed a chapter to The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning (2025). She has also co-authored two books about the murals in Philadelphia, and co-edited a third, Mural Arts @ 30 (Temple University Press, 2014), published on the occasion of Mural Arts’ 30th anniversary.

Golden holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and degrees in Fine Arts and Political Science from Stanford University. In addition, she has received honorary PhDs from Swarthmore College, Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Widener University, Arcadia University, LaSalle College, Haverford College, Rosemont College, Villanova University, St. Joseph’s University, Auburn University, and The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).