A People's Legacy:

This exhibition follows the groundbreaking career of artist and educator Judith F. Baca and the creation of The Great Wall of Los Angeles. Emerging from her early work as a teacher and youth counselor in Los Angeles, Baca developed innovative models of mural-making that combined community collaboration, rigorous historical research, and collective storytelling. Produced with hundreds of youth, artists, and historians through the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), the mural transformed the Tujunga Wash flood control channel into a sweeping chronicle of often-unspoken histories of historically marginalized people and their struggles for social justice. The exhibition highlights Judith F. Baca’s training at the renowned Taller Siqueiros in Cuernavaca, where she studied advanced mural techniques and the principles of collective composition developed by David Alfaro Siqueiros—an experience that strengthened the stylistic cohesion and narrative scope of The Great Wall of Los Angeles and helped shape it into one of the world’s largest murals and a powerful monument to collective memory. In a time of renewed cultural and historical erasure, the Great Wall stands as a bold testament to resistance and the enduring power of public art.