As a longtime admirer of Judy Baca’s work, I had to go see the exhibit of twelve 1970s panels of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, that opened at the Jeffrey Deitch gallery on February 22 and will close on April 4.
In October 2023, I attended the press opening of the LACMA exhibit “Painting in the River of Los Angeles: Judy Baca and the Great Wall” (read here my Cultural Daily article) and the closing in July 2024 when the panels were completed (read here my Village article).
Those panels were completing the 1960s, and the public was able to watch Baca and the other muralists paint them in real time. Then the large murals on canvas would be rolled up and placed in the Great Wall physical location, on the concrete banks of Tujunga Wash in the San Fernando Valley.
The painting of the 1970s panels continued at the SPARC location in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station, but I did not go watch it there, so it was a delight to see the finished murals at the gallery. And there are quite a few more in the works, the goal being to complete the decade before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) was founded in 1976, so this year marks their 50th anniversary.
In 1978, Judy Baca conceived of this public work to depict the history of California from prehistoric times to the present, and painted the mural with help from hundreds of youth volunteers and other muralists.
One theme runs into another in these very long panels, 12 feet high by 36 feet wide, as they depict significant events of the 1970s, “a decade of defiance and dreams,” from various political activists’ perspectives.
Some issues I was familiar with, others I had to learn about. Click on words underlined in orange for more info.
You are on Indian land
Native American occupation of Alcatraz
The quote by Chief Red Cloud says: “ They made us many promises that I can remember. But they kept but one. They promised to take our land and they took it.”
Wounded Knee. American Indian Movement
Read here my article “Indigenous People in the US.”
And other activists Wanted by the FBI, like Leonard Peltier.
George Jackson at San Quentin prison
University students protests against the Vietnam War
End of Vietnam War
“What’s Going On” 1971 song by Marvin Gaye
South East Asian Refugees
See here my photo essay on Vietnamese Refugees
Santa Barbara oil spill
Notice the 1962 environmental science book Silent Spring by Rachel Carlson
Tom Bradley, elected in 1973 as first Black mayor of Los Angeles. I met him in 1984 while covering the 1984 Olympics, read here.
Integration of schools and white flight
Chicano Art
Sister Karen Boccalero, founder of Self-Help Graphics & Art
David Siqueiros, Mexican muralist
See here my article “Olympic Murals at Hammer”
Above the sign RIGHT TO CHOOSE
Supreme Court Justices: Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan
Reproductive Justice
Panel continues with KEEP ABORTION LEGAL, Equal justice under the law, on the T-shirt: my body my choice, a pink and red vagina.
This panel ends with the Janes (read my article) and San Francisco first openly gay mayor Harvey Milk.
If you can’t visit Great Wall of Los Angeles in person, SPARC created a virtual tour on their website.
Click on links for murals and descriptions
3 Immigrant & indigenous people build California
This time I will go visit SPARC at Bergamot Station. Maybe I will get to see young muralists paint.