Navigation/Search Help


When we compiled the database, we were impressed with the power of its search abilities according to one or multiple parameter queries and we wanted to include as much of that "power" as possible here for website visitors.

Searches can be performed using any one or any combination of these criteria: by a particular Artist; by Year rendered; by District (i.e., the broad city districts as defined by Sherlock's Maps of Winnipeg); by specific Neighbourhood (as defined by Winnipeg Citizen's Information Services); or by Mural Sponsor (if any).

If you are looking for a particular Mural, the fastest way to find it here is to search by what information you know or remember about it. If you can only remember that the artwork is on, say Portage Avenue and have no idea of the City District or Neighbourhood, it would probably be best simply to use the browse feature and browse along the Portage Avenue locations. However, if you know the Mural is in the West End, was completed in 2002, and is by Artist John Doe, then select each of those respective fields for those three criteria prior to hitting the "go" button. Any search result matches to your query will be displayed via the thumbnails immediately below as well as displaying the current range and total number of matches. If you are using the browse feature use its own "go". The "go" button is used with the search feature to indicate you've selected all the criteria for your particular search.

We include both District and Neighbourhood in the hopes that either one or the other category will be useful. The Districts category contains those broad district names that Winnipeggers are most familiar with. The Neighbourhood names, though less familiar, divide the city into smaller areas, and might prove more useful divisions to some than the larger districts. We ourselves have found BOTH categories useful. At yearend, we run a District/Neighbourhood sort of the database and use it as our guide to quickly cover the city to recheck all locations- it makes the task a breeze. One word of caution when using Neighbourhoods as a criterion: some city streets that contain several Murals may also serve as the boundary of adjacent neighbourhoods, resulting in the situation (e.g., Selkirk Avenue) where Murals on opposite sides of that same street fall into different Neighbourhoods.

Navigation: When either browsing or searching, the SELECTED Mural location may have more than one view associated with it (there are many locations where one photo cannot possibly do the Mural justice!). Alternate views (if any) of a particular wall or location will appear as thumbs aligned vertically directly above the Mural information text.

For certain Murals, we have researched its background and conducted interviews with the artists, proprietor, sponsors, and/or other relevant individuals. In these cases, look for the "Murals comments/backstory" information starting directly below the large photo and its caption. We've heard from several visitors that this is one of their favourite aspects of this site, reading the backstories and artist's comments on their walls. If you're looking for locations WITH Mural comments, here is a hint as to how to find many of them: if we have interviewed an artist and they are featured in the Artists Profile section, it is quite likely that all of their respective walls will feature their comments below the main photo.

The "location map" link will open a new window with a street map centered on that particular location. In the Murals section, our own mapping interface is used. In the other outdoor art section, in most cases we've shown the Yahoo maps version. There are some other locations where we've preferred where either MapQuest or MapPoint plotted the location (e.g., MapQuest, IMHO, seems better at finding underpasses). More importantly, if you are not that familiar with the layout of Winnipeg, Yahoo Maps and MapPoint both have an excellent feature that will draw you a route from your current location (e.g., hotel) to the Public Art location you wish to visit.