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Black Lives Matter murals are rooted in particular communities, histories and moments of protest; no single work speaks for every Black community. The five documented examples below show how muralists and institutions used public art to oppose racism and police brutality, memorialize lives, and invite public conversation. They are a verified selection, not a reconstruction of an unverified list of 33 works.
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Dates, locations and credits below come from municipal, museum and news accounts. Public-art status can change, so the dated status notes should not be read as confirmation of present-day condition.
| Work or project | Place and date | Artists or organizers | What distinguishes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asheville BLM street mural | North Pack Square to South Pack Square, Asheville, North Carolina; installed July 19, 2020 | Local artist Joseph Pearson led the word “Black”; the Asheville Art Museum account identifies him as lead artist for that word. | It surrounded the then-concealed Vance Monument, connecting the mural to local protests and debates about the monument. |
| Communityworx mural | 125 W. Main St., Carrboro, North Carolina; completed December 18, 2020 | Lead artist Tyrone Small and student artists Ash Granda-Bondurant, Carina Rockart, Theo Preston and Cyani Jacobs. | A collaboration between a lead artist and students, described by the town as an expression of community acknowledgment of and opposition to systemic and institutional racism. |
| Century Center BLM mural | Century Center, facing East Main Street, Carrboro; completed January 15, 2021 | Erbriyon Barrett, an Atlanta artist, painted the mural. | A second Carrboro mural, distinct from the Communityworx project and located on a municipal building. |
| No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper | Boston; 2020 | Cey Adams, Sophia Dawson and Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez; installation panels also included work by artists-in-residence Rob “Problak” Gibbs and Rob Stull. | The MFA Boston describes imagery of Martin Luther King Jr., a clenched fist and infant George Floyd held by his mother. The museum identifies the work as a tribute to victims of police brutality and mass incarceration. |
| Murals That Matter | Gallery Place, Washington, D.C.; 2020 | 18 murals were presented in the DowntownDC BID exhibition; individual artist credits are not stated in the cited account. | The works were painted on plywood barriers. The exhibition shifted the barriers’ public meaning by presenting them as artworks; this was a different project from the 16th Street street mural. |
How place and collaboration shape a mural
Asheville: a street work beside a contested monument
The Asheville Art Museum reported that the mural ran from North Pack Square to South Pack Square around the 75-foot Vance Monument, which had been concealed while local officials considered its future. The museum said the project aimed to promote racial healing and communal reconciliation. That setting makes the work more than lettering on pavement: it placed a public statement about Black lives beside a monument whose meaning was under active scrutiny.
Pearson described art as both a record and a point of view: “Art freeze-frames certain issues and points of view, but it also offers a different perspective—an artist’s perspective—on whatever is going on,” the museum quoted him as saying.
Carrboro: student artists as collaborators
The Town of Carrboro’s account credits Small and four student artists on the Communityworx mural. Small called the project “a testament to what we can all do as a people if we can just put our differences aside and come together to create something beautiful and lasting forever.” The quote reflects his description of that collaboration; it should not be treated as a universal account of how every BLM mural was made.
The town also documents Barrett’s separate Century Center mural. Keeping the two projects distinct matters: they were completed on different dates, at different sites, and with different named artists.
Rank #3
Boston: memorial imagery and linked injustices
The MFA Boston’s description of No Weapon Formed Against Thee Shall Prosper brings together a civil-rights leader, a protest symbol and an image of George Floyd with his mother. The museum frames the work in relation to police brutality and mass incarceration, showing how a mural can connect a specific death to broader systems of punishment and injustice.
What the mural movement’s visual language included
The Black Lives Matter Mural Map, drawing on the Black Lives Matter Street Mural Census, reported that more than 65 murals used the standard yellow traffic-paint lettering style. It described varied adaptations: some used artist-painted individual letters or Pan-African colors, some added a hashtag, and some extended the mural form to other justice issues. The map’s figures derive from an open census, which it says may be incomplete or contain errors.
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The same map reported at least 27 installations on June 19, 2020, with another dozen across that weekend; it counted nine murals in New York City, the most of any city. These are census-based figures reported by the map in 2022, not a complete verified inventory. The map also cautions that mural locations do not necessarily correspond to locations of fatal police encounters, so it should not be used to imply a precise geographic relationship.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhy preservation and changing status matter
Murals are public artworks, but their materials and sites can be temporary. The Associated Press reported in May 2025 that some murals were maintained while others had been lost to wear, construction or vandalism. It said Washington, D.C.’s 16th Street BLM mural near the White House was removed in March 2025 after pressure from the Republican-led Congress. AP also attributed an estimate of nearly 150 remaining “Black Lives Matter” murals to Urban Art Mapping. That is a dated estimate from the report, not a current count or a guarantee that any particular mural remains in place.
Oakland offers a complementary example of stewardship. In a September 30, 2020 announcement, the Oakland Museum of California described Art for the Movement as a collaborative effort to document, preserve and present works made in support of Black lives. Black Cultural Zone and Black-led artists and organizations led the cohort, with Oakland Art Murmur and the museum supporting it; the initiative included artist support in preservation and exhibition planning. Its approach recognizes that documentation and artist involvement are part of preserving a work’s meaning, not simply recording its appearance.
Quick Recap
How to look at these works without flattening their differences
- Notice the site. A street painting beside a contested monument, a wall on a municipal building and an artwork on a temporary plywood barrier address different audiences and acquire different meanings.
- Look for authorship and process. Some works name a lead artist and community collaborators; others are documented as exhibitions or initiatives, and their individual credits may not be available in the cited account.
- Read imagery in context. Text, portraits, fists and memorial images can carry distinct local meanings. A Center for Media at Risk analysis of Philadelphia murals by Black artists discusses protest, collective experience, urgency, hope, unity and conflicting emotions in that group; its interpretation is not a universal key to all murals.
- Check when a status claim was made. Installation, repainting, deterioration, removal and preservation are different stages. A dated report is evidence of status at that time, not necessarily today.
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