Artwork / 2025 / First Zoo

This big #1 is part of 52 Weeks of Firsts, a public art project put together by Mural Arts Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center, and Historic Philadelphia. It’s on display throughout the city in 2026! First Zoo will be featured at an event on August 8^th but it’s on display at the Philadelphia Zoo all year.

The animals depicted on this #1-shaped sculpture all represent firsts, making this an artwork that’s layered in meaning. The Philadelphia Zoo had the first successful birth of cheetahs in a zoo in 1956, the first successful birth of a giant river otter in North America in 2004, and the first successful birth of an orangutan in a US zoo in 1928. Additionally the zoo participated in a captive breeding program to help save the sihek, and in 1985 the institution had the first recorded parent-reared bird of this species. Underneath the panel depicting the sihek and its nest, there’s Mommy the Western Santa Cruz Galápagos tortoise, because she became a mother for the first time in 2025 at 97 years old.

This is one of three artworks I created for 52 Weeks of Firsts: check out First Continental Congress and First Steamboat for Passengers and Freight.