UDC art students' then-and-now mural won a place in NoMa

Students from Professor Davide Prete's Interdisciplinary Art II class at the University of the District of Columbia painted a mural in NoMa that began as a classroom idea, the university said on October 20, 2026. The piece, "Side by Side," puts two views of the neighborhood next to each other and asks people to spot what changed: new buildings filling in, a historic trolley replaced by a Metrobus. It was one of 12 murals chosen for the NoMa in Color festival from more than 250 entries.

Ann Standrod drafted the two-image idea last spring after an afternoon at Alethia Tanner Park, where she watched families and decided a mural should give people a reason to linger and to learn the block's history. The class then worked the design into a proposal. Painting it took students and alumni together. Graduates Kaila Garcia and Aliyah Morris-Chevalier helped lead the work on the wall, alongside Prete, Standrod, and students Ever Casarrubias, Zola Johnson, Audrey Neumann, Jenn Rudiger, Makayla St. Cyr, and Bahran Tesfaye. Prete said the class had to do what public artists do: find the chance, write a proposal, fit a drawing to a real wall, and finish it outside.