Project Objectives
The project has three major objectives:

• To complete the final conservation—consolidation and cleaning—of the mural;
• To construct a shelter that will ensure protection of the mural in the future;
• To make the mural both physically and historically accessible to visitors by constructing a viewing platform, and by installing an interpretive center that places the mural in its historical and artistic context .

Project Overview
David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the great Mexican muralists of the 20th century, painted América Tropical in 1932 on the second story exterior south wall of a large brick building known as the Italian Hall—one of the structures that today make up the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument in downtown Los Angeles.

Commissioned by F.K. Ferenz, the director of the Plaza Art Gallery, which occupied the building, the mural was controversial from the start. Although the art community of Los Angeles heralded it as a powerful creative work, others considered its content politically explosive. A portion of the mural was covered in white paint a few months after its completion, and within a decade the mural had been completely painted over.

While this overpainting obscured the mural, it also, ironically, protected it to a degree from the elements. Nevertheless, the environment played a large role in the deterioration of América Tropical. There is also evidence that the technique and the materials employed by Siqueiros contributed substantially to its deterioration. However, Getty Conservation Institute conservators have determined that there is little organic material left on the surface of the mural; future decay due to intrinsic factors should be minimal.

América Tropical measures some 80-by-18 feet and features a large central figure of a Mexican Indian, crucified on a double cross beneath an American eagle. On the right side of the mural, a pair of sharpshooters takes aim at the eagle. The scene is set in a lush landscape with a Meso-American pyramid, sinuous and profuse vegetation, and the figure of a coiled serpent. There are other attributes of Central American temples, as well—Chac-Mool figures, steles, and stones from the temple are seen in the front of the landscape.

In 1988, the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) entered into an official partnership with El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument (a department of the City of Los Angeles) to conserve the mural. At that time, staff of the GCI carried out a preliminary analysis of the paint remaining on the surface of the mural. Over the course of the next three years, several consultants worked on the mural and performed the first phase of conservation treatment.

In 1991, the GCI installed an environmental monitoring station adjacent to the mural to collect data on the surrounding environmental conditions. From 1993 to 1994, the GCI conducted an investigation of the organic paint components; also in 1993, GCI staff carried out a digital capture of the mural to provide thorough documentation of the state of the mural's surface.

The walls of the Italian Hall—including that on which the mural is painted—were seismically stabilized by the City of Los Angeles in 1995. In 1997, the GCI undertook a thorough condition survey of the mural in preparation for final conservation work.

In 2002, the mural was stabilized after the old shed was removed. A new protective box, designed and built by staff from the J. Paul Getty Museum, was built to cover the mural.

Last updated: March, 2006