Part of DIALOGUE: Artists at the White House
Published: Issue 1, Summer 2009
Interview by JASMINE MAHMOUD

JUDY BACA is a painter and muralist, community activist, UCLA professor, and the founder and artistic director of Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She is well known for directing The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural that stretched 2,754 feet, and was painted by hundreds of diverse L.A. youth.

It seems to be a dynamic time for arts policy in the White House. We are hoping for that.

You are a political landscape painter, who has revitalized disenfranchised populations and impoverished neighborhoods through their inclusion in art-making processes. Why do you think the pairing of arts and activism has worked particularly well in stimulating effective social and political change? There are still people in the arts who argue that art is about nothing, that it has a role in which it should just live within the aesthetic realm, and not in the utilitarian realm. It has been demonstrated in my own life repeatedly that [art] is effective in ways that it’s not possible to do through other processes and other methods. Arts speak to people in the language that they understand.

The arts have a way of engaging people at the first line. Look at my own work on the Great Wall, in which I worked with young people—over 400 people—to paint this historical work that is an alternate history to the U.S., a sort of “pre-Howard Zinn Howard Zinn” giant-scale monument. It taught people to interact with each other and learn about each other’s history. I took diverse kids from all these different neighborhoods and different ethnic groups, put them together to produce a long, giant-scale mural. We created a site of public memory, a place in which we could make a repository in the public realm for these stories that are family stories, these stories that were untold about people who helped build the country. And while we were doing that, we were calling across issues that were constant, that were bigger in scale than the bodies of the children who were painting them. The arts have the particular capacity to reach people where they are, to speak the language that they understand, to engage them in a way that is personal and emotional and spiritual.

Arts are often held up by government officials for economic and urban development reasons, which offer little benefit to artists. Often when cities emphasize the stretch of galleries in their neighborhoods, the gallery walk will be popular for a few years and then condos will come in and push out the artists. There’s a tension in arts policy between economic development for some, and the sustainability of artists. What are your thoughts on that tension? Artists often become the predecessors. We are used in very strange ways; it’s a real issue. In public art, for example, we have a very big problem in that the percent for art in construction is what is usually used to create artwork, artwork [that] is often times asked to mitigate the bad circumstances of development—placed over an indigenous burial site or within a new subway station [built] in the middle of a neighborhood because they’ve declared it essentially a place that has to be patrolled. And then they are asking an artist to paint on the surface of the wall in that community to make the bitter pill more swallowable.

The same is true in terms of development. The artists go into blighted communities, areas that nobody wants to live in. They see the qualities of the beautiful buildings, they see what can become, they have the creative character and capacity to dream some other alternative. We are creative problem solvers, we are people who look at the issue and see beyond that particular paradigm and dream something else. And of course if you can’t dream anything else, it just can’t happen. We very often transform neighborhoods. In fact, I’m living in one of those neighborhoods, which was a very run-down community when I came here in the 1970s. Nobody wanted to live here: it was considered to be a drug haven.

Where are you living? In Venice [California]. The artists came and took over the Venice canals, renovated the houses, the little cottages. What has been known as a historical art community in Venice has pretty much been made impossible for artists to live in it. And yet, they are still advertising condominiums and lofts as “artists’ lofts.” There was a group of us  artists who wanted to demand truth in advertising; make them call these not “artists’ lofts” but “lawyers’ lofts.” If you love the neighborhood which creative people have transformed [since they] have honored the history of a place, have created sites of public memory, have [created] a more convivial space, perhaps it would be a better idea in the development to consider how you keep the artists in that region.

Going forward, do you have any suggestions for policymakers to solve this wide-spread problem of arts-revived neighborhoods becoming unaffordable for artists and other low-income residents? It falls into the larger rubric of affordable housing. In housing, for example, the mix of the kinds of people who live in the place is part of what should be considered in terms of low-income housing, or affordable housing. Why not set aside artist facilities? It makes [for] a better community.

Long ago, I proposed to [former] Mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley—the city had a large amount of blighted real estate, big open lots—that they consider the possibility of turning old houses into living spaces for artists, and in return for that, the artists would generously give back to the community by opening their spaces to the community to teach classes or provide senior citizens the opportunity to paint on a Sunday afternoon, to give back to the community. It creates a better relationship between the community and the artists. There are many creative ways that this can be addressed. And probably not one I can think of is new. They have been proposed before, they have worked effectively before, and have been abandoned for political reasons—very often because the arts constituency is not political enough to hear.

I want to talk with you about the May 12th meeting with the Office of Public Engagement at the White House. What are the talking points that you remember and what was the most compelling thing about what White House officials said? We were getting a sense of the new thought that was coming from this administration. In one of your questions you ask: “why was the NEA not there?” The answer is kind of obvious: because the NEA has been rather insignificant for some period of time.

[Who] I saw were not the usual suspects. There were 60 people who were organizers and activists and artists who had worked in change organizations in their communities. They were the types of artists who created a kind of buzz around the country during the Obama campaign. They were the types of artists responding to policies in the Bush administration that they disagreed with. They were the types of artists who worked in communities. It was a really interesting range of people but what they had in common was an expanded view of who participated in the arts, what the purpose of the art was, and its relationship to grassroots organizing.

You say that they were not the usual suspects. Who are those usual suspects? Normally, a White House meeting with the arts would really be the high art world. It would be the museums, it would be the major philanthropists. It would be people designated by the Museum of Contemporary Art, or the Philharmonic, or the Opera. It would be the same people you would find at the White House presenting with orchestras and major-monied presentations. It wouldn’t be Urban Bush Woman or Green For All or the hip-hop groups.

First thing Mr. Strautmanis [Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Engagement] said: “this is the meeting I have been wanting to have happen.” People gave us their email addresses so we could propose presentations in the White House. They said, “real engagement is messy; you have to be comfortable with civic engagement. We are going to create a space for that. Here are the ground rules: no complaints, just solutions. Where are you willing to compromise?” People are not used to this idea of civic engagement. We know how to be oppositional; we don’t know how to engage. We’re not sure what that means. They said, “don’t trust Obama, trust the process. Don’t trust the administration, trust the process.”

Buffy Wicks [Deputy Director, Office of Public Engagement] said: “we are going to do a month of service in the arts this summer. We’re looking for organizations that do this kind of work, organizations like SPARC to do this.” They mentioned our name. She knew us. She read the materials. I haven’t even seen that kind of homework from the National Endowment for the Arts. Literally. I was so dumbfounded. I didn’t even raise my hand until somebody poked me [and said], “Is SPARC in the house?” And then I jumped up and said, “yeah, I’m here!”

They said that they are giving a big focus to the arts. They think arts appreciation and creativity and ideas give us a competitive edge. Internationally the arts are necessary, they are really interested in arts education, they are really interested in health care for artists. Kareem Dale [Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy] said, “go and tell everyone the arts are back.”

There’s been a lot of talk about a Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs and about an Arts Czar. At the briefing, was there a conversation about these ideas? No, there wasn’t conversation about specific proposals although we came with them. What they did was create a vehicle for us to communicate with the White House. We broke into areas of interest, which were determined by [us], not by the White House. I worked on Policy and we have five precepts. Arlene Goldbard is heading that committee; she calls it the cultural framework.

[Editor’s note: Judy Baca listed those five precepts: 1) Protect and Expand Cultural Equity and Cultural Rights; 2) Include Artists In National Recovery and Building Sustainability; 3) Advance A New Works Progress Administration; 4) Assess Cultural Impact on Communities; 5) Restore Public Interest and Media Justice In the Culture Industries. The following is about the third precept, “Advance A New Works Progress Administration.”] Literally, we checked around the room to see how many [of us] had begun at CETA [Comprehensive Employment and Training Act]—so many. They were given the impetus to do this work starting with CETA. What we need now is another boost. I think the total amount of money that we got, that opened SPARC was $750 a month for the artists. And it was 1977. It was a modest income and people were grateful to have that income so that they could work full time doing work in their communities. It was a marvelous thing.

In sharing your policy brief among many people including arts activists, do you feel that there’s anything that arts activists can do to be more effective at local and state levels, without policymakers? Yes. One of the things we received from the Director of the Office of Public Engagement is the notion that we should be appearing at any town hall meetings and raising the arts. That doesn’t happen. There’s reluctance when you are dealing with things like health care and the economy. Essentially, what’s really critical is that we are not apologists for this, that we are not just advocating as a special issue group. That’s the problem because we’re caught in that historic position of the arts as the Culture Wars, where we were arguing for the rights of one individual to produce whatever work they wanted with public money. It hurt us, and made us come off as a community of selfish people who weren’t concerned with the greater good. We were affecting First Amendment rights—the Mapplethorpe issues and Karen Finley, the NEA four—which was, of course, something I supported. I spoke in front of the Senate. At the time I went before the Senate, I was thinking, “what am I doing here, because I am really not speaking to the censorship that has occurred historically to the exclusion of entire populations of people.”

The momentum surrounding this White House meeting seems to signal a shift from arts policy of the 1990s that centered on the Culture Wars and censorship issues (and was considered by many to be an attack on the arts) to arts policy today, which focuses on the question: how can the arts be utilized? Is that right? Yes, I think there’s a shift. One of the things that [members of the Obama administration] said at the end of the White House meeting was “the arts are back.” If they are saying that the arts are back, there’s a shift. A $50 million infusion has gone to the NEA.

I don’t think that they have anybody [with a deep arts knowledge]. There was a discussion between some of the people who were organizing the meeting and some of the White House people, and they [members of the Obama administration] didn’t know what the CETA program was. So, we are not talking about deep knowledge in the history of the WPA or CETA. We are talking about most people in that room who are under 40 years old.

What advice would you give to an arts activist who was not at this meeting, who is not plugged in, but wants to make change by contacting her local, state or national policymaker? If it’s an artist, hook [your work] into the Obama agenda, work on the environment, the priorities the administration has.

For activists, we have to raise the issue of the arts over and over again. Particularly with those of us who already come to grips with the notion that [the] arts don’t have to be pigeonholed in one area in an intellectual dialogue between a small group of people, but that it has meaning in the larger sense of the population as a whole. That we can deliver it to the poor, that we can deliver it to the maintenance workers of Los Angeles.

Here’s my favorite thing to talk about right now: Eli Broad [L.A.-based billionaire] steps forward to save MOCA [The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles] with $32 million in a bailout. They overspent. If my organization had done that—had overspent—you would bet it wouldn’t exist. He steps forward to bailout MOCA, and then he hooks [them] up to existing money within the city, ensuring that there will be $15 million of matching money coming from another fund. This is all silently done.

What happens when all of the murals in the city of Los Angeles disappeared—many of them being the first ethnic face in particular communities? That the murals actually provided insight into Koreatown and into the Korean community, provided an insight into the Armenian community, provided the first Chinese door painter in Chinatown. We are looking at all of these images that were critical to the development of a diverse face of the city of Los Angeles. They brought in tourists, brought people from everywhere to see them. Children grew up alongside these pieces and marked their lives and their places near the presence of those murals. So then when we elect [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa, he gets in a position of power, he brings in a new cultural director and everybody doesn’t worry because we have two Hispanics. Well he allows the entire legacy of the murals of Los Angeles to disappear.

I am working hard to give them an alternative to show how their stupid policies can be undone and reorganized. If you spend $70 million on graffiti erasement and not one dollar takes graffiti off a mural; if you spend $250,000 to incarcerate one youth; if you spend $44 billion on prisons; if your whole agenda in terms of the budget is to make sure you increase the police force; how many people can you put in prison, and when is that a bankrupt idea? Just take 10% of your $70 million, tax the people who are making money on the spray cans. Make them accountable for selling these things now, advertising graffiti on the side of the can. Give kids an opportunity to paint in areas that are sanctioned.

Where are [L.A. youth] going [to] go? We have allowed the proliferation of billboards and advertising to such an extreme, that they have learned that lesson above all others: not the arts, but corporation logos. The point is: “get myself up there like one of those guys.” That is what I am concerned about. That is bad policy, and that is policy we can attack. So we have been asking people to come online, we have built a website called savelamurals.org, we have asked people to come online to sign petitions. We are delivering those petitions to our mayor and to city council people. We are saying, “Yes, we heard you don’t have any money, we have heard that argument. Redirect your mis-spent money. We want to hold you accountable on how you spend that money, it’s not just cleaning blank walls.” Let’s teach a group of young people, give them jobs—instead of putting them in prison—let them learn to clean the walls, learn conservation practices, learn to be ambassadors for those works. Let’s build areas in the city for the kids.

One of the things we are doing right now, we are going to deliver books to our city council members [with images of] before and after the murals, because we have these wonderful archives. We frankly can’t get Eli Broad or any other people to put a dime into the massive numbers of 60,000 images. Los Angeles was the mural capital of the world at one point. These murals that have disappeared, we should at least bury them if we are going to let them die. Let’s put a memorial to what they stood for. We can conduct tours of what they once were. That’s what we plan to do. So you go to the place “The End of Despair, The Resurrection of Hope … Not Here.” And you see the names of these pieces. These wonderful ideas about civic and public space, about hope for the communities—and they are gone.

Everybody can play a role. Take this issue of the murals, for example. Come online and deliver testimony of when you saw it first, what happened to you in front of it, what do you remember about it, why is it important to you. Because this isn’t about one artist or one person. It is about a slice of public memory. And is that important? I think that is important to a civil society. I think it’s important to us understanding each other, to us working alongside each other with respect. That’s what I think is really critical. What is delivering that to the people? It is the arts. It happens to us in a hundred ways, with the hip-hop kids doing poetry where they make us see a new reality, that Russell Simmons stuff is going on national levels. That’s what we need, we need more methods of delivery. I think we are going to have to be really creative to figure out ways to communicate the way that the arts can be incredibly transformative.

You were speaking about what’s happening in L.A. and the covering up of murals. The historical wave demonstrates a tendency amongst local/state/national policies to vacillate between pro-arts and anti-arts thinking. In your mind, is there any way to have consistent growth and consistent progress where murals won’t be covered up and where we keep making progress in arts policies, instead of cutting against progress that we made? You can identify exactly what it is. We had a complete turnover in City Council. We were protected by the City Council. But we have never had excellent leadership for the arts in L.A. We have struggled with the leadership from the very beginning. What we need is a consistent plan for neighborhoods, for community arts, for major museums. In other words, [we need] a healthy arts structure. Our community organizations are not to be abandoned when we build bigger and bigger museums. You’ve got the Getty, Skirball [Cultural Center], MOCA, and LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art]—and therein does not make a healthy arts delivery program. While we can build these institutions, we can’t seem to sustain them.

You need a really strong arts community that can speak to its leadership, all these organizations that bring everyone to the table—both community level people and the majors. The majors should care when there is a loss of a mural.  MOCA should care. But instead what they do is backend all these other arts organizations and say, “these are not significant, we are the only significant ones.” We have a problem in terms of our leadership recognizing that the health of an arts community—the cultural delivery in a city—has to come from a variety of different methods and places. We should work more collaboratively to keep health flourishing within the arts community. We really got to educate.  Every time there’s a new council person, they should be visited by the arts leadership.

That seems like something to be done at every level. Is there a problem with a lack of historical memory eroding regional arts politics? We’re starting over and over again. In a sense, we are doing that with the Obama administration, too. I think they really do want us to speak about this, they want us to broadcast it more widely and literally. They told us the arts are back, to trust the process, and until we have tried and have been knocked down, I am willing to do bottom up, if they are willing to hear from us. I’ll work extra hard to do my part and I will call on the arts community. I think really it’s going to take our whole community to begin to do this. TAP