Brandeis Stories

By Steve Foskett
June 30, 2026 • Arts

Courtesy of Lee Hopkins, OLP Creative.

Looking to infuse community spaces with color and meaning, artist and Brandeis Professor Joseph Wardwell recently completed a mural at the New Mission High School in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston.

Wardwell, the Charles Bloom Professor of the Arts of Design, was commissioned for the work through A Canvas of Culture, a multi-year collaboration between the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture (MOAC) and the Boston Art Commission, and in partnership with Street Theory.

The most recent round of projects focused on Boston Public Schools, and Wardwell brought XiHu Arfa ‘24, Anh-Thu Pham ‘26, and Eli Mones ‘24 to use art to reflect the school’s culture, mission, and values in an area of the building defined by its arches and vaulted ceilings.

Selected artists are matched with a specific site based on project type, scale, and demonstrated experience level. Artwork by selected artists amplifies the diverse, inclusive, cultural, and social richness of communities while adding vibrancy to the city’s landscape.

Wardwell said his vision, realized over a nearly year-long planning and design process, was to work into the mural the school’s core values: Tenancy, Integrity, Tolerance, Academic Excellence and Nurture, or TITAN.

“It enhances the school culture and gives the space a more meaningful presence,” Wardwell said.

Amanda Hawkins, public art project manager in MOAC, said students had the opportunity to watch the mural take shape in real time, and gained a rare behind-the-scenes look at a professional artist’s practice. She said Wardwell’s new work “shows how public art can bring a school’s values to life while giving students and the community a meaningful connection to the work behind it.”

By pairing an artist with a school community for a collaborative mural project, A Canvas of Culture embeds art into the everyday experience of Boston’s students. To date, 14 murals have been completed and by the end of the year 24 murals will be completed in 16 Boston Public Schools, according to the organization.

Over several weeks in May into June, Wardwell, Afra, Pham and Mones got to work, pouring out buckets of blue and yellow paint and transferring Wardwell’s design to a much larger canvas.

The Brandeis alumni said they were excited to work with Wardwell, and said it was good to see how a background in art can have practical career considerations.

“I’m looking to get into art conservation and archiving in the Boston area,” said Arfa, who majored in studio art at Brandeis. “It was a good opportunity here to see the trajectory of Joe’s career and see how my career might go.”

Mones agreed, and said stepping into this project and seeing the process unfold was illuminating.

Pham said it was helpful to learn how to transfer certain techniques to a larger-scale project, and said the students’ reactions upon completing the mural validated their efforts.

“Some of them were asking, ‘why can’t this be all over the school?’” Pham said.

Wardwell said having the trio of alumni work on the mural with him reflected a classical apprenticeship structure in the art world that dates back thousands of years.

“Artists would learn through working with more established artists,” he said. “It’s an age-old mentorship process.”