One of the things I like about Philadelphia is the murals that are seemingly everywhere.

Having moved here in 1980, I can remember a time BM, before the murals.

But I didn’t recall the origin. So this article gives a quick update.

Jane Golden recalls:

“After graduating from Stanford, I moved to LA, where I did murals. I fell in love with mural-making because of the way they make art available to everyone. Then I got really sick with lupus, and I came back east to be with my family. At a Philadelphia hospital for treatment, I read that Wilson Goode was elected as the first Black mayor, which was hugely exciting,” Golden told Billy Penn. ”He was going to create all these new programs and one of the programs was the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN). He said in an interview in the newspaper that it occurred to him that a lot of the kids had talent, so he was going to make sure that his anti-graffiti network had an art program for young people to help clean up the city.

“I sent my resume to Wilson Goode’s office and his head of arts and culture, Oliver Franklin. I got an interview with Tim Spencer, the person in charge of anti-graffiti, who gave me the job,” Golden continued. “I started working with graffiti writers, and we started running our programs everywhere, and then we started doing murals.”

The anti-graffiti program was phased out in the 90s, but Golden asked then Mayor Ed Rendell to “create a community-based public art program — and he agreed.”

And so there are now more than 4,000 murals in Philadelphia that honor politicians, athletes, musicians, artists, and others.

You can count them!