Jane Golden

Who is Jane Golden?

Jane Golden is an artist who has been an active mural painter since the 1970s. Following graduation from Stanford University, she moved to Los Angeles and created a number of large, well received murals in the Los Angeles beach areas, particularly in Santa Monica, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was co-founder and director of the Los Angeles Public Art Foundation.

In 1985, following a diagnosis of lupus, Golden left California to return to be with her family in the Philadelphia area, where she had grown up. She then founded the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, in the early 1990s as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. It was a program designed to fight graffiti in the city by giving graffiti artists a more productive artistic outlet. She quickly began working with at risk teens. Together, they began instead to paint murals in the city and were trained in practical working skills. The program grew, and the Mural Arts Program has created over 3600 murals to date.

In 2003, Jane Golden received a Visionary Woman Award from Moore College of Art & Design. Eisenhower Fellowships selected Jane Golden as a USA Eisenhower Fellow in 2003.