Philly street art chronicler Conrad Benner is sharing what he’s learned in an online Barnes class

Philadelphia’s public spaces are Conrad Benner’s school of art.

This mostly outdoor university of murals, sculptures, posters, stickers, and graffiti tags is where the Fishtown native has acquired a world-class education in street art.

Beginning this week, the self-taught photoblogger and curator will serve as instructor of an online class for the Barnes Foundation. The first installment of The Art of Philly’s Public Space is Thursday. The weekly, two-hour sessions continue through March 30.

“The staff was talking about new classes, and I immediately thought: ‘We need a class on street art. And there’s no better person to lead it than Conrad Benner,’” said Kaelin Jewell, senior instructor in adult education at the Barnes.

Jewell is among the 150,000 people who follow Benner’s Streets Dept photoblog on Instagram. Like his website streetsdept.com, it showcases a young, diverse, and edgy crew of emerging and established artists for whom Philly is inspiration, studio, and platform.

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“I’m not going to be a guy on a screen talking at people during this class,” said Benner, 37, who lives in South Philly and has a workspace in the BOK Building. He’s also a part-time project manager for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

“I’m gay and Italian, so I can talk,” he said. “I want this class to be a great conversation, like I’ve had with the artists, photographers, writers, and podcasters I’ve worked with and learned from.”

Said Mural Arts executive director Jane Golden: “Conrad has such an interesting way of looking at the city. He sees things that other people don’t and recognizes artists before other people do. He has a sixth sense about artists.”

Benner graduated from Kensington High School in 2003 and became interested in art while taking classes at Community College of Philadelphia. He was 20 and working in the vitamin department of Whole Foods on South Street when he got friendly with a group of people who were regulars at Old City’s First Friday gallery and studio tours.

“It was exciting, different, and fun,” Benner said. “I started to do freelance writing for [the now-defunct] Phrequency.com and part of my beat was First Friday shows.”

Initially with a flip-phone and soon after with a digital camera (a gift from his boyfriend at the time), Benner began taking photos of murals as well as works of what he calls “noncommissioned art” in Philly’s neighborhoods and in Center City.

“I started Streets Dept in 2011 basically as a fanboy photoblog,” he said. “I was just walking to and from work and school with my camera and photographing things I liked.

“But within a few months I had street artists like Joe Boruchow and Ishknits reaching out to me. I started going out on the street with them and other artists, as they were working and installing. I interviewed them and started to learn about this world.”

In the early years, Benner also worked full time doing social media for clients of the marketing firm Quaker City Mercantile. But he left in 2015 to devote himself to Streets Dept full time.

It has since expanded to include an annual print magazine, monthly walking tours (Streets Dept Excursions), and a standalone division called Streets Dept Walls.

“It’s the curatorial arm of the business,” he said. “We connect artists with opportunities to create in the public space.”

Symone Salib and Nile Livingston were already making names for themselves as artists in Philly when Benner posted about them.

“I was working on a temporary mural in collaboration with the Sunkist company in Northern Liberties in 2018 and Conrad came out to document it” for the blog, said Livingston, 34, who grew up in West Philly.

“I appreciate how Conrad is like an archivist, documenting artists’ work, and he’s very intentional and focused on social justice in the projects he chooses,” she said.

Livingston, in collaboration with Streets Dept and Mural Arts, is creating a mural for the Philadelphia Ballroom Project. It will be erected later this year on 13th Street in the Gayborhood to celebrate Philly’s distinctive version of the Harlem Black queer cultural institution dramatized in the FX show Pose.

Salib worked with Streets Dept on a mural, Summer of Self-Reflection, that was installed at the Fashion District in Center City in 2019.

“Conrad was one of the first people to hire me to do a mural, and it was a point of growth in my career,” she said.

And when Salib created a mural in Northern Liberties in 2021 to honor Gloria Casarez, a Philly LGBTQ pioneer for whom an earlier and much-beloved mural was displaced by a Center City development project, Benner was there to document the new work.

Benner sees the Barnes class as a chance to grow the audience for traditional and monumental public art like the sculptures on City Hall, as well as grittier creations, like those of the artist who calls himself irregular and often works with shards of mirrors.

“Public art is not some new invention, and it’s not icing on the cake,” Benner said. “It’s part of the arts and culture industry that employs people and attracts people to visit or live in Philadelphia.

“Public art is the story of our city. And it should tell the complete story of our city.”