Published: October 22, 2009

What started as an anti-graffiti initiative in the mid-’80s has since transformed Philadelphia into the mural capital of the United States, with over 3,000 murals and hundreds more being created each year. Maureen O’Connell, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), is researching the ethical implications the Mural Arts Program has on the community. As she phrased it, “I’m not approaching these murals as an art historian; I’m approaching them as a theologian.”

“It’s a way of exploring how the arts can serve as a conduit for justice in urban inner city communities,” O’Connell said. “The Mural Arts Program provides alternatives to retributive justice; it provides justice in terms of reconciliation, healing and restoring broken relationships—relationships that were broken or damaged by crime.”

She sees the images as secondary to the work that is put in to creating them. “Lifetime prisoners, kids in juvenile detention and neighbors in the community all work together on the same project at the same time. The images grow out of a relationship they establish with one another.”

The relationship begins with brainstorming ideas and gathering signatures. A muralist is then commissioned to transform  these ideas into an artwork. The community works with the artist to express what its members want in the image. When completed, the image is divided up into a grid and applied in paint-by-numbers style across squares of fabric. Individuals from all parts of the community can then each be working on the same mural simultaneously, whether in prison or in a church.

One project she observed was of the decoration of an Islamic mosque in North Philadelphia. A Jewish muralist and a Catholic muralist worked with the community to create the design. It’s often that the murals cause religiously oriented dialogue. O’Connell said, “Much of it is inter-religious dialogue; bringing people together around images because they are not as divisive of a doctrine or creed or dogma. Images are open to a variety of interpretations.” As they were putting together the design, they had to be aware that they couldn’t use anthropomorphic images. They ended up “decorating the mosque with the 99 names of Allah, in English and Arabic. The names are characteristics that can apply to the god of Christian or Jewish tradition, and the transcendent in Buddhism.”

As the project moved forward, children from schools and lifetime prisoners alike worked to create the individual panels that would be constructed into the final mural.

One of the groups on which O’Connell has focused her observation is adjudicated youth. She said, “They say that working on something like this helps them to ‘fall back,’ to step back from the code of the streets—of being always on the offensive. They see violence as one of the main ways of negotiating relationships with people. Working on these murals in the detention center, they get involved in a process that is very contemplative. They’re working together, but they’re painting—being creative and seeing the product of something they themselves do.”

If one of the kids at the detention center finds they have an interest and talent in the arts, once they’ve finished serving their time, they can be apprenticed under a muralist. “It gives the kids who have an interest some way of developing skill and a passion for something. It gives them a vision of different possibilities,” she said.

Along with incorporating her research into her classes which include The Beauty of Justice and an upcoming senior values course called Art & Christian Values: Faith that Imagines Justice, she also wants to further investigate public arts programs in other locations, domestic and abroad.

“These types of programs help rebuild relationships that have been broken by conditions of concentrated poverty. They teach us how to make sense of suffering or violence, how to express forgiveness.” O’Connell said. “The arts help us understand what justice is about.”

O’Connell is leading a trip to Philadelphia on Oct. 31 to give students an opportunity to see the murals. The group will depart from FCLC at 8 a.m. and return by 6 p.m. Space is limited, and a handful of seats will be reserved for first-year students. Reserve a spot by e-mailing O’Connell at [email protected].