A mural celebrating “The Office” has popped up in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania thanks to a group of Philadelphia artists, immortalizing Dwight Schrute, “That’s what she said” and several other symbols of the show.
“The Office: The Story of Us” was designed and painted by the West Philly-based, female-led public arts initiative Hagopian Arts. It was completed in August and will be unveiled to the public during a ceremony next month.
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The mural, located at 503 Lackawanna Ave., stretches 86 feet wide and 27 feet tall. It includes realistic black-and-white portraits of 17 characters (cast members signed off on their likenesses) against a colorful background featuring some of the show’s most famous quotes and items (like Phyllis’ yarn and one of Stanley’s beloved pretzels).
Hagopian Arts was founded in 2015 by Kala Hagopian. The organization, which specializes in art inspired by nature, has worked with several education and community outreach programs, including the School District of Philadelphia, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge, Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, the Free Library of Philadelphia and Mural Arts.
In 2020, Hagopian Arts was brought on to the mural project, which was coordinated by the nonprofit Scranton Tomorrow, Universal Studios, NBC and Peacock. Rose Randazzo, of Scranton Tomorrow’s Mural Arts program, reached out to Hagopian after admiring her 2019 “Mercantile Library” mural.
Hagopian and her team of artists spent the past year working on the mural in their Philadelphia studio. The mural was completed on Aug. 22. Fans of “The Office” who happen to be in Lackawanna County, or who are dedicated enough to take the more-than-two-hour trip from Philly, can attend the mural’s dedication ceremony and artist meet-and-greet on Friday, Oct. 6 at 5:30 p.m. at the mural site.
“The Office,” based on the British sitcom of the same name, is an Emmy-winning mockumentary series that follows the daily hijinks of employees at Scranton’s fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company. Starring Steve Carell as the well-intentioned but harebrained regional manager Michael Scott, the show ran for nine seasons on NBC from 2005 through 2013. Although the series was largely filmed in Los Angeles, there are several Scranton landmarks featured throughout the sitcom’s many episodes.
A reboot of “The Office” will reportedly begin development at the completion of the writers’ strike, which may soon end now that a tentative agreement between writers and studios was reached. If the rumors are true, the reboot would bring back Greg Daniels, creator of the U.S. version of “The Office.”