"Hitting the Wall: Women in the Marathon," detail of mural for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, 1984, Judith F. Baca. Acrylic on cast concrete, 20ft x 100ft mural located at the 4th Street off-ramp of the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles. Sponsored by the Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympics. Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives SPARCinLA.org
A Conversation with Judy Baca
GETTY CENTER
The Getty Center and Online
This is a past event
Renowned Los Angeles artist Judy Baca has been at the forefront of public art design and execution for over four decades, transforming the urban landscape with the help of hundreds of community participants. In conversation with curator Julian Brooks, Baca reflects on some of the public mural projects she has led, with an emphasis on their evolving preparatory processes and questions around preservation.
Complements the exhibitions Judy Baca: Hitting the Wall and The Lost Murals of Renaissance Rome.
With generous support from Rob Lovelace and Alicia Miñana.
About the Artist
One of America’s leading visual artists, Dr. Judith F. Baca has created public art for four decades. Powerful in size and subject matter, Baca’s murals bring art to where people live and work. In 1974, Baca founded Los Angeles’ first mural program, which has produced over 400 murals, employed thousands of local participants, and evolved into an arts organization: the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She continues to serve as SPARC’s artistic director while also employing digital technology in its digital mural lab to promote social justice and participatory public arts projects.
Beginning with the awareness that the land has memory, Baca creates art shaped by an interactive relationship between history, people, and place. Her public artworks focus on revealing and reconciling diverse peoples’ struggles for their rights and affirming the community’s connections to place. Together with local communities, she co-creates monumental public art places that become “sites of public memory.”
In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District named a school the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy, located in Watts, her birthplace. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant awarded for the expansion of her Great Wall of Los Angeles mural in North Hollywood.
Image: Judith F. Baca with the final coloration for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics mural "Hitting the Wall: Women in the Marathon," 1984, Judith F. Baca. Sponsored by the Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympics. Image courtesy of the SPARC Archives SPARCinLA.org