Seventeen artists from the D.C., Maryland and Virginia region are spending this week painting 16 new large-scale murals across NoMa, part of an annual festival that has turned the neighborhood into one of the region's largest outdoor public art collections. NoMa in Color runs from September 11 through September 18, and it will wrap with a community celebration at Alethia Tanner Park.
The festival is hosted by the NoMa Business Improvement District, and according to DC News Now, the new works will push NoMa's mural collection to 73 pieces total. The outlet reports the broader NoMa in Color mural festival has produced more than 200 murals since it launched more than a decade ago, transforming the neighborhood into what the station describes as a living canvas every fall.
Artists were chosen through a competitive open call restricted to creators living in the DMV region, according to East City Art. A major piece of this year's installation work is happening along a 900-foot Metro concrete retaining wall on the Metropolitan Branch Trail at WMATA's Brentwood Rail Yard facility, executed through a partnership with the transit agency's Art in Transit program, per WMATA. That agency has partnered with the NoMa BID since 2016 to turn railway retaining walls into public art.
A Weeklong Paint-In Ends With a Neighborhood Party
The festival's closing celebration, called Color Jam, will run from 4 to 9 p.m. on September 18 at Alethia Tanner Park, giving community members and art lovers a chance to celebrate the artists and the finished murals, per the DC News Now report. The event will include music, food trucks and hands-on art activities, the station notes.
The closing festivities are part of this year's event. This year's event is backed by a mix of public and commercial sponsors, including Events DC, micromobility partner Lime, Union Market Ace Hardware, and The Morrow Hotel, which created a custom NoMa in Color guest suite featuring local artwork, according to the NoMa BID.
The Park's Namesake and Its Industrial Past
Alethia Tanner Park, where the finale takes place, carries its own weighty history. The 2.5-acre park, dedicated in June 2020, is named after Alethia “Lethe” Tanner, an enslaved woman who purchased her own freedom in 1810 with money earned selling vegetables near the White House and went on to fund Washington D.C.'s first school for free Black children, according to DCist. The name was selected by public vote, and the park honors Tanner.
Before it became parkland, the site was a vacant, contaminated industrial rail yard that underwent extensive soil replacement and phytoremediation using mustard plants, per The Cultural Landscape Foundation. The land acquisition later won a Washington Business Journal Best Real Estate Deal award in 2016.
Part of a Larger Public Art Strategy
The mural wall along the Metropolitan Branch Trail at the park operates on a two-year rotational cycle, with half the section intentionally repainted every September so new artists can contribute and the open-air gallery keeps evolving, according to the STQRY Directory. That rotation gives new artists a chance to contribute while keeping the open-air gallery evolving.
Surface murals are only part of NoMa's public art footprint. The NoMa Parks Foundation has also installed illuminated underpass pieces, including “Rain” on M Street NE in 2018 and “Lightweave” on L Street NE in 2019, according to the NoMa Parks Foundation. Rain is an illuminated underpass installation. The installations are located near the neighborhood's railway tracks.
A Neighborhood Built Fast, Still Finding Its Identity
The mural festival also lands amid a broader beer-and-trail promotion: the fifth annual Metropolitan Beer Trail, a NoMa BID digital passport initiative linking 14 brewpubs and bars along the Metropolitan Branch Trail, runs through the end of the year, per the National Law Review. That trail initiative follows the same corridor now getting new murals.
All of this art investment is unfolding in NoMa. The NoMa-Gallaudet U station is a Metrorail station.
