North Philly
North Philadelphia has the highest concentration of murals in any American neighborhood — over 400 works spread across a dozen communities that make up one of the most mural-dense corridors on earth. The Mural Arts Program was born here, on the walls of a community determined to paint its way out of disinvestment and into visibility.
Featured Artists
All artists →Phillip Adams
North Philly native who has created over 60 murals through the Mural Arts Program since 1998. "A Dream Deferred" on Broad Street near Erie Ave draws directly on Langston Hughes's poem — the faces depicted include residents Adams photographed in the neighborhood over a two-year period, giving the work a documentary intimacy rare in monumental mural art.
James Burns
Artist and educator who grew up blocks from Cecil B. Moore Ave and has spent two decades painting the community's history back onto its walls. "North by North" is his most ambitious work — a narrative mural spanning three buildings that documents the history of the civil rights movement in Philadelphia, from the 1944 transit workers' strike to the present.
Willis "Nomo" Humphrey
Germantown-based artist working at the intersection of Afrofuturism and community mural practice. "Germantown Rising" reframes the neighborhood's historically significant architecture — its colonial-era buildings where the first American protest against slavery was signed — through an Afrofuturist lens that imagines what the neighborhood could become.