Great Wall of Los Angeles

The Great Wall of Los Angeles is one of the city'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 Judith F. Baca, the founder and artistic director of SPARC (Social and Public Art Resources Center). 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.
The City Project is working with SPARC to restore and extend the Great Wall to bring 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 Los Angeles State Historic Park, the Rio de Los Angeles State Park, and the Heritage Parkscape. The Los Angeles River serves as a metaphor for the collective memory that unites land, water, air, and people. We are restoring and extending the Great Wall to include developments up to the present.
Great Wall of Los Angeles by Judy Baca © and SPARC.