On the Wall: Community Murals in the East Village

An Illustrated Talk with Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman

For decades, artists and neighborhood groups in the East Village and Lower East Side have worked together to create vibrant community murals. As much as murals beautify their surroundings, they address and often “protest” local and, sometimes, national concerns.

“Protest murals” are as much a declaration of affirmation as an act of opposition. This slide lecture examines how this duality is expressed in New York’s community murals and tracks the evolution of themes and aesthetic styles, always placing the murals in the larger social, historical, and political context.

This program, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities’ Speakers in the Humanities program