Mural Arts Philadelphia names Emily Mello as next executive director, with a goal to express "community pride"

In Philadelphia, you don't have to go to a museum to find art. You can see it on the side of a rowhome, above a neighborhood corner or on the commute to work.

More than 4,500 murals have become part of the city's landscape and story.

Now, the organization behind many of them is entering a new era.

Mural Arts Philadelphia announced Wednesday that Emily Mello will become its next executive director, succeeding Jane Golden, whose leadership helped transform the organization over more than four decades.

Mello takes over Sept. 1. Golden will conclude her tenure as executive director Aug. 31 and remain with Mural Arts as a consultant through the end of the year.

For Mello, stepping into the role means inheriting both an organization and a legacy that have become deeply connected to Philadelphia's identity.

"Jane Golden has been a force, and she's established an incredible legacy on which to build," Mello said. 

Mural Arts traces its roots to 1984 and Philadelphia's Anti-Graffiti Network. Today, it is the nation's largest public art program, producing more than 80 public art projects each year, employing more than 250 artists annually and stewarding thousands of murals across every City Council district.

Mello said that scale can create something powerful for people who encounter the work in their own neighborhoods.

"I really think there's an experience of wonder just to see work at this scale," she said.

But for Mello, the murals are about more than transforming the physical landscape.

"The art shifts the physical landscape and then it tells a story," Mello said. "The history of Philadelphia. A story that's relevant beyond Philadelphia but certainly central and very local to the neighborhoods and communities where Mural Arts is active."

Mello comes to Philadelphia with more than two decades of experience as an educator, curator and arts leader.

Most recently, she served as the Mayer Senior Director of Learning and Public Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Her previous work includes leadership roles at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and Pérez Art Museum Miami.

At the New Museum, Mello helped expand youth and adult community programs and worked on initiatives focused on art and social justice. In Miami, she helped develop arts education programs and worked on a $10 million Knight Foundation endowment to provide free access to arts education.

That experience comes as Mello prepares to answer a significant question: How do you protect what Philadelphians have come to love about Mural Arts while still allowing the organization to evolve?

Part of the answer, she said, is making sure the city's walls continue to reflect the people who live among them.

"Whose story is being told has really been contested in a lot of ways," Mello said. "So what I see for Mural Arts is a really important role in continuing to tell multiple narratives in a visible way. In a way that there's community pride."

That mission extends beyond individual works of art. Mural Arts operates programs involving youth education, restorative justice, mental health and public art preservation, using art as a way to bring people into conversations about their communities.

Golden said she welcomes Mello to the role with optimism about what comes next.

"It has been the greatest privilege of my life to help build an organization that believes in the transformative power of public art," Golden said in a statement. "I welcome Emily Mello as Mural Arts' next Executive Director with optimism that the organization will continue to inspire and deepen its impact under her leadership."

For Mello, the opportunity now is to build on that history while asking what Philadelphia needs from public art in this moment.

Because the next generation of Philadelphia's murals won't simply help define what the city looks like.

They will help tell the story of who lives here.