Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and The Great Wall
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
October 26, 2023 - June 2, 2024
LA Art Documents is pleased to present another video dedicated to contemporary and modern art exhibitions. In this video, we visit The Los Angeles County Museum of Art to share a glimpse of the work in progress happening during the run of their special installation and exhibition entitled Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and the Great Wall, in which the celebrated muralist Judy Baca and her team transform the museum into a studio. She and several artists from the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) are working to expand Baca’s iconic mural The Great Wall by painting two new sections of the mural inside LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion. In addition to watching the artists at work, visitors can view a selection of archival materials never previously exhibited.
Spanning a half-mile in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel in the San Fernando Valley next to a park and bike trail, The Great Wall is a half-mile pictorial representation of the history of ethnic peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950s and respected as a cultural landmark and one of the country’s largest monuments to inter-racial harmony. It was completed over five summers beginning in 1974, employing over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working alongside artists and various experts.
In recent years, SPARC has received several grants to restore and continue new work on the Great Wall, including the design of four new decades (the 1960s-1990s). After the artists complete the paintings inside LACMA, depicting the 1960s Chicano Movement and Watts Renaissance, they will add them to the Great Wall, therefore creating a mile of visual history.