Most airports are designed to keep passengers moving. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) would rather have you looking around. Between the check-in counters and the departure gates, the airport doubles as one of the more unexpected art hubs in the US, with photographs, murals, ceramics and sculptures greeting the millions who pass through each year.
For a traveller from India, one of the most moving works sits in Terminal A-West, in the area for ticketed passengers. Titled Moonshot, it is by artist Arnab Gan Choudhury, who was born and raised in Calcutta and moved to the US in 2018.
Gan Choudhury’s work deals with memory, identity and invention. In his early years in America, he eagerly waited for his summer visits home. With each passing season, though, the excitement faded, and the city he grew up in began to feel different from the place he longed to return to. Calcutta, for him, is now less a point on the map than a place built from nostalgia, carrying echoes of a past life filtered through time and migration.
“In my absence, it has changed, it has moved on and has now become a place I do not recognise... So how does one go back to a “home” that no longer exists? Through unconventional means, of course! Desperation often provides hope in the most absurd, impractical things, driven by the singular question – What if?” he says.
Moonshot answers that question with fantastical sculptures, contraptions that imagine ways of carrying him back “home”. They aren’t meant as working machines but as playful propositions. Made from scavenged materials, they carry the visual vocabulary of a Calcutta childhood: street signs and symbols, elaborate diagrams from school textbooks, rickshaws and cartoon imagery. The result is whimsical and also tinged with melancholy and longing. For anyone who has left the city, or who is about to board a long flight away from home, the work lands with real force.
Artwork on display at Philadelphia International Airport
Moonshot is part of a much larger effort. Decades ago, the airport set up its Exhibitions Program, a visual arts initiative meant to humanise the airport, showcase Philadelphia’s cultural life and enrich the journey for travellers. The programme runs rotating exhibitions across the terminals, changing throughout the year, and has won national recognition. Very few airports in the world have an arts presence this strong. For artists and institutions from the Philadelphia region, it also means an audience of millions from around the world.
The welcome begins as soon as international passengers land. In the Customs Arrival area of Terminal A-West, Philly Starts Here by Philadelphia muralist, ceramicist and animator Isabella Akhtarshenas captures the energy of the city. The mural is a love letter to Philadelphia, packed with iconic landmarks and neighbourhood references. It welcomes Philadelphians home and invites visitors into the City of Brotherly Love.
Doha route to Philadelphia
For travellers from eastern India, getting to that mural has become easier. Qatar Airways connects Calcutta to Philadelphia with a single stop at its hub, Hamad International Airport in Doha, one of the most advanced airports in the world.
The airline resumed daily flights between Doha and Philadelphia from August, expanding its North American network. The route had been a strong performer, with many passengers connecting through Doha to and from cities across South Asia. Philadelphia also works as a gateway to the rest of the US, since passengers can connect onward across American Airlines’ domestic network.
The route is made special with Qatar Airways’ Qsuite business class and Starlink high-speed Wi-Fi. On a journey where the Doha-Philadelphia leg alone runs well past 12 hours, that matters. Each Qsuite seat turns into a fully flat bed, so passengers can stretch out properly.
The airline puts as much thought into sleep as into the seat. Business class passengers get a mattress pad, a full-size pillow and a thick duvet, which makes it feel more like a bed than an airline seat. On many overnight services, pyjamas, slippers and amenity kits are also provided, so travellers can change into something comfortable before turning in. Add gourmet dining and the airline’s lounges in Doha, and a two-leg journey from Calcutta to the US East Coast becomes far less of an ordeal.
Much of the appeal lies in how simple the journey is. Passengers from Calcutta stay with one airline all the way to Philadelphia, on a single ticket, with their bags checked through to the final destination, so there’s no need to collect luggage or check in again in Doha. Hamad International Airport is perfect for transfers, with clearly marked connection routes, security screening for transit passengers and a terminal laid out so that most gates are a short walk away. A long layover can be spent in the lounges, among the shops, or around the airport’s own collection of public art. For travellers from eastern India, the trip to the US East Coast feels like one journey rather than a string of separate flights.
Sound, clay and a champion
Back at PHL, the art keeps coming. One exhibition celebrates Philadelphia International Records (PIR), the legendary Black-owned label behind The Sound of Philadelphia. Songwriters and producers Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell, known as The Mighty Three, built a catalogue of more than 3,500 songs around messages of love, peace, empowerment, pride and strength. The hits include Love Train, Back Stabbers, For the Love of Money, Me and Mrs. Jones, If You Don’t Know Me By Now and TSOP, the theme of the dance show Soul Train.
The label wrote for or signed The O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, Patti LaBelle, Lou Rawls, The Stylistics, The Three Degrees, Billy Paul and The Jacksons, among others. For more than five decades, its music has reached listeners of every generation.
(Left to right) Qatar Airways lounge at Hamad International Airport and the fare on Qatar Airways
In Terminal A-East, The Clay Studio shows work from its Resident Artist Program. The programme hosts 12 early-career artists at a time for up to three years, helping them develop their practice in an urban setting. Each cohort is chosen to reflect a range of lived experiences, cultures and aesthetic approaches. The artists on display include Soojin Choi, Bradford Davis, Dehmie Dehmlow, Michael Dela Dika, Celia Feldberg, Adrian Gomez, Jeremiah Ibarra, Micah Lewis-Văn Sweezie, Daeun Lim, Janina Myronova and Robert Zumwalt.
And then there is the city’s most famous fighter. Between gates A-15 and A-16 stands the airport’s own Rocky statue, a nod to the “Italian Stallion” whose run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum became part of film history. Passengers who can’t make it to the original statue at the museum can strike the victory pose before take-off, without ever leaving the terminal.
In a city that turned a boxer, a record label and a clay studio into part of its identity, it makes sense that the airport would too. Whether it is a Calcutta-born artist building imaginary machines to fly home, or a fictional champion with his fists in the air, PHL makes sure that art, quite literally, takes wings. And it helps that Qatar Airways is making it easy for people from India reach Philadelphia and beyond.