Feature
The mural painters being paid to paint over their own work
Cities commission street art to lift a neighbourhood, then approve the buildings that replace it. Some artists now write the demolition into the contract.
Culture editor
8 min read
A commission in the old freight district, scheduled to stand for eighteen months.
The wall is four storeys high and will be gone by spring. The artist knows this. It is in clause seven of her contract, next to the fee for painting it grey again.
Temporary by design, murals have become the cheapest way for a city to say that a district is changing.
Art with an end date
Developers like murals because they photograph well in a planning application. Councils like them because they cost less than a bench. The artists have learned to ask what happens afterwards.
I used to find out from a neighbour that my wall was gone. Now I get paid twice and invited to the demolition.
Of forty commissions we traced across three cities, twenty-six were on buildings with a redevelopment plan already filed. Only four are expected to last five years.
What stays
A few cities now require a permanent work in the new building for every temporary one on the old. The painters we spoke to were unconvinced. A lobby, one said, is not a street.
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Sofia Brandt
Culture editor
Sofia edits the culture pages and writes about music, work and the crafts we are losing.
