Charting Community Improvement
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| PHOTO HIPS/WILL KIRK |
Angela Chen ’06 has spent a lot of time Baltimore City’s neighborhoods, attempting to measure the impact of urban murals on the communities they decorate. A history of art major, Chen has long been fascinated by the idea of “visual psychology” —how a perceived image affects the viewer mentally, emotionally, even physically.
Using “quality of life” data gleaned from studies of the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, Chen worked to chart areas of improvement. “I’m trying to see if neighborhoods with murals exhibit more improvement than other, mural-less neighborhoods, and to see at what stage of improvement the murals first appeared,” she says.
“[Philadelphia's] burgeoning program has reached a point of commercialization, and one would hope that Baltimore murals do not lose their true meaning—that of encouraging and symbolizing community improvement and unity...” Angela Chen '06, |
The subjective portion of her project, made possible by the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program, involved interviewing community members, mural artists, and city officials to examine the murals’ effects on individuals.
“It seems the murals are at times merely indicators of social change—that a neighborhood is already on its way up, and the mural signifies that it at last has the economic means for such things as art,” she says.
Chen’s research will have an impact on the neighborhoods she is studying. As part of her work, she analyzed the Philadelphia Mural Program—which is larger and better funded—to see how Baltimore’s program might be improved.
The Baltimore program relies mostly on private funding (donations and grants), which fluctuates wildly from year to year. The Philadelphia program has an annual budget of $3 million, about one-third of which comes from the city.
Chen says she has mixed feelings about Philadelphia’s success. By bringing national attention to its mural program, the city has increased government and private-sector funding for the art. But, she says, “their burgeoning program has reached a point of commercialization, and one would hope that Baltimore murals do not lose their true meaning—that of encouraging and symbolizing community improvement and unity—on the way to becoming a tourist attraction.”
