[Mellon Foundation] Grant Story: The Great Wall of Los Angeles

Los Angeles is Fashioning a “Tattoo on the Scar” Where Its River Once Ran
Grantmaking areaArts and Culture
AuthorAnthony Balas
PhotographyEmily Shur for Mellon Foundation

Judy Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), and starting in 1974, over five summers, employed 35 artists and over 400 socially and economically diverse youth and their families to bring the vision to life.

Part mural, part monument, and part community-based history-telling exercise: The Great Wall of Los Angeles is as hard to pin down as it is grand.

Located along a half-mile section of the LA River network, The Great Wall of Los Angeles tells a sweeping visual story of the city’s history, bringing forth lesser-told histories: from the lives of native plants, animals, and peoples to a generations-spanning struggle for civil rights. As work to expand The Great Wall continues, Mellon is presenting here a comprehensive and interactive rendering of the mural to experience the wall in its full grandeur.

Its story dates back to the 1970s, when the US Army Corps of Engineers approached visual artist Judith F. Baca to assist in “beautifying” the San Fernando Valley’s Tujunga flood control channel, a tributary of the now—mostly concretized Los Angeles River. Although Baca viewed the empty tributary as a “scar on the land,” she also saw the project as an opportunity to “recover the stories of those who were disappeared along with the river.” Driven by a vision of an endless visual narrative, Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), and starting in 1974, over five summers, she employed 35 artists, as well as over 400 socially and economically diverse youth and their families, to bring the vision to life.

[Read the full story here]