{"id":243794,"date":"2025-09-21T11:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/243794\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T11:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:47:13","slug":"shepard-fairey-mural-in-philadelphia-highlights-liberty-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/243794\/","title":{"rendered":"Shepard Fairey mural in Philadelphia highlights liberty, justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>For 25 years the \u201cDeclaration of Independence,\u201d a 112-foot mural of a classically Greco-Roman sculpture, looked over one of Philadelphia\u2019s busiest intersections at 15th and Arch streets from the towering wall of what is now a Courtyard by Marriott hotel.\n<\/p>\n<p>Artist Peter Pagast had used one of the statues at City Hall across the street to evoke the ancient Roman influence of the American republic.\n<\/p>\n<p>But no more. After a quarter century of exposure to the elements, \u201cDeclaration\u201d had to come down.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was badly deteriorated,\u201d said Mural Arts Philadelphia project director Brian Campbell. \u201cThe building ownership had approached us about doing something. They wanted it restored or replaced.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Campbell said the cost of restoring would be the same as creating a new mural, so Mural Arts opted for the latter, asking celebrated street artist and designer Shepard Fairey, who came to widespread prominence when he designed the \u201cHope\u201d poster during the first Barack Obama presidential campaign,\u00a0 to come up with something new.\n<\/p>\n<p>Fairey\u2019s \u201cUplift Justice\u201d is strikingly different from its predecessor, whose monochrome palate has been replaced by vibrant pops of teal, aquamarine, scarlet red and yellow. A woman\u2019s face looks upward toward a scale of justice.\n<\/p>\n<p>So different, but not really. The works from Fairey and Pagast both deliver bedrock ideas about American democracy.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe last lines in the Pledge of Allegiance are, \u2018With liberty and justice for all,\u2019\u201d Fairey said, stressing the final two words. \u201cThis to me is about representing that concept of justice, and that relationship between a symbol and our actions in the wake of considering the symbol.\u201d<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-716586\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2025-09-19-e-lee-shepard-fairey-philadelphia-1425-arch-street-uplift-justice-mural-liberty-bell-1024.jpeg\" alt=\"Shepard Fairey stands on a rooftop beside his new mural, ''Uplife Justice.''\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\"  \/>Shepard Fairey stands on a rooftop beside his new mural, \u201dUplife Justice.\u201d (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n<p>Fairey has created other large-scale public artworks in Philadelphia before, but typically made in wheat paste, which is not designed to last long. Pieces he had installed <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/shepard-fairey-helps-expand-reach-of-open-source-with-new-philly-murals\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in Center City<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/shepard-fairey-mural-overlooks-fishtown-photos\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fishtown<\/a> over the last 11 years have since disappeared.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":243795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,13964,129930,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-243794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-mural","10":"tag-mural-arts-philadelphia","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115242129690747007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}