PST: LA/LA – Judith F. Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles Retrospective

October 14 – December 16, 2017
Reception: Saturday, October 14 | 4-7pm
Curated by Mario Ontiveros
As part of the Getty’s initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the University Art Galleries at California State University Northridge (CSUN) presents Judith F. Baca’s Experiments in Collaboration and Concrete, an exhibition surveying the nearly fifty-year career of mural making by CSUN’s alumna Judith F. Baca, Los Angeles’s premier muralist, mentor, educator, and community activist. It highlights the collaborative processes and aesthetic innovations central to Baca’s The Great Wall of Los Angeles (begun in 1976), a 2,754 foot-long mural that runs along the concrete wall of the Tujunga Flood Control Channel in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. The Great Wall, which depicts crucial moments throughout California’s history, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Judith F. Baca’s Experiments in Collaboration and Concrete will also feature drawings, research materials, and ephemera related to Baca’s current plans for expanding The Great Wall into the 1960s and 1970s. Whole highlighting The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the exhibition will also provide a larger context of Baca’s public projects by including two seldom-seen murals: Uprising of the Mujeres (1979) and Balance (1990) from the traveling installation The World Wall: A Vision of the Future Without Fear (1986 – present). The exhibition is curated Mario Ontiveros, professor of Art History at CSUN.

BACA: Art, Collaboration, and Mural Making, edited by Mario Ontiveros, is the first book to fully explore  The Great Wall of Los Angeles, the landmark work of muralist Judith F. Baca. A renowned half-mile long mural, the project began in 1976, spearheaded by Baca and executed by more than four hundred artists and artists-in-the-making. For the first time in one volume, scholars from across America join forces to study Judith F. Baca and The Great Wall, analyzing the why of its inception and the how of its creation. BACA: Art, Collaboration, and Mural Making includes essays by Anna Indych-López, Andrea Lepage, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Mario Ontiveros, and Carlos Rogel.

Major support for this exhibition provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.

 All events (except for the event at Vroman’s) take place in the CSUN Art Gallery

Gallery hours:
Noon to 4pm Monday through Saturday, and Noon to 8pm on Thursday.Location:
CSUN Art Galleries 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330

Main Gallery:
In the Art and Design Center, Located on N. University Dr. (Plummer St.) between Lindley and Etiwanda Ave.

Parking:
Lot D6 at Halsted/Lindley/ $8.00 Daily.  Obtain permit from info booth at Lindley/Nordhoff or Prairie/Darby or at yellow self-serve dispensers.  Visitors requiring accommodations for a disability, call 818-677-2156, 5 working days in advance.

For more information, call Erika Ostrander at
(818) 677-2156 or visit www.csun.edu/artgalleries