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The Great Wall of Los Angeles


The Great Wall of Los Angeles © Judith Baca.

The City Project and SPARC (Social and Public Art Resources Center) are bringing people together through parks, public art, and education. We are reviving the forgotten history of Los Angeles through the Los Angeles River, the Great Wall of Los Angeles, the state parks in the Cornfield, Taylor Yard and the Heritage Parkscape. The Los Angeles River serves as a metaphor for the collective memory that unites land water, air, and people.

The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of Los Angeles's great cultural landmarks and one of the country's most respected monuments to inter-racial harmony. The Great Wall is a landmark pictorial representation of the history of people of color and other ethnic groups in California from prehistoric times to the 1950's, conceived by SPARC's artistic director and founder Judith F. Baca. Begun in 1974 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.