Meanwhile, a school has expressed interest in lining its parking lot with the panels and having students repaint them as a school project. And it’s uncertain who will patch the wall to keep it from becoming an eyesore. The plywood panels might buckle like potato chips when they’re unbolted from the wall, Mora said. “Essentially, we were a group of well-intentioned homeboys.” “The committee didn’t have the experience or the talent to chase grant money,” Mora said. They held fund-raising barbecues, and came up with $500 for a consultant to confirm what they already had figured: Restoring the mural would cost a pile of money.Įven storing the massive work would be pointless, unless the group could find a climate-controlled space so big that each panel could stand alone instead of being stacked. Mora and other Tortilla Flats veterans formed the inevitable committee. Surely, some foundation somewhere-some wealthy art patron, some government agency, some benevolent museum-would be happy to help. Would a city in Mexico dismantle the works of the great Diego Rivera? they argued. People who had grown up in Tortilla Flats met with him, each hoping to take home a panel that depicted someone in their family, a favorite restaurant, any memento of the old neighborhood.īut a few people spoke out for keeping the mural intact, and history alive. Last year he put out word that the mural had not aged gracefully and had to come down. This will be Mora’s second attempt to deconstruct his work. You still get the general idea of joy and music and struggle, but a good winter’s rain could wipe out the detail as surely as the state wiped out the neighborhood a half-century ago. In some places, the paint is so faded you can’t read the mural’s narrative. Someone has used a blade to etch Xs over many of the mural’s darker faces. A few splotches of graffiti have appeared.
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