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The Great Wall of Los Angeles: Judith F. Baca’s Experimentations in Collaboration and Concrete

Saturday, October 14, 2017 - 12:00pm to Saturday, December 16, 2017 - 12:00pm

Location:
University Art Galleries, Main Gallery
Cost:
Free
Judy Baca standing in front of mural
Image Credit: Judith F. Baca, Photograph of The Great Wall of Los Angeles A view of Judy Baca and Mural-makers meeting at the 1940's section titled "David Gonzalez" in progress. Photograph courtesy of SPARC Archive.
 
 

 

The Great Wall of Los Angeles: Judith F. Baca’s Experimentations in Collaboration and Concrete 

October 14 – December 16, 2017
Reception: Saturday, October 14, 4-7pm
Curated by Mario Ontiveros

EVENTS

+ Curators Talk: Monday, October 16, 10am
+ PST Westside/Valley Regional Focus Day: Saturday, October 28, Curator Walk-through, 1pm and 2pm
+ Judith F. Baca & Amalia Mesa-Bains: In Conversation: Saturday, December 2nd, 2pm

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 premiere 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.


PRESS RELEASE

About Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art vin dialogue with Los Angeles.

 

Through a series of thematically linked exhibitions, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will present a wide variety of important works of art, much of them new to Southern California audiences. While the majority of exhibitions will have an emphasis on modern and contemporary art, there also will be crucial exhibitions about the ancient world and the pre-modern era. With topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas, 20th-century Afro-Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions will range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries. Using the collaborative approach that characterized the original Pacific Standard Time, this new initiative will involve dozens of organizations in Southern California as well as partnerships with institutions, curators, and scholars in Latin America.

 

Major support for The Great Wall of Los Angeles: Judith F. Baca’s Experiments in Collaboration and Concrete is provided through a grant from by the Getty Foundation.

About CSUN Art Galleries

A major art exhibition space in the San Fernando Valley, the CSUN Art Galleries are located just a few miles north of downtown Los Angeles. The Galleries have mounted over 500 exhibitions since 1980 with yearly gallery attendance averaging 25,000 visitors.
 

Gallery hours:
Noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. on Thursday.

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

Press images are available upon request. Admission to all CSUN Art Galleries exhibitions and programs is free and open to the public.

CSUN Art Galleries
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, California 91330-8299

Exhibitions Dates:
Friday, August 18, 2017 through December 16, 2017
Reception: Saturday, October 15, 2017 |  4-7pm 

Venue:
CSUN University Art Galleries. Main Gallery

Sponsors:
Sponsors logos: Pacific Standard Time:LA/LA, The Getty, Band of America

For more information on Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA For more information on The Getty