Commission Accepts Revised Mural Plan in Little Tokyo : Art: The project that sparked community protest still requires approval of the city redevelopment agency.

Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Commission voted Thursday to accept a revised plan for a politically charged mural by artist Barbara Kruger on a 250-foot exterior wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Temporary Contemporary in downtown.

The commission also voted to issue a letter supporting the project to the board of the Community Redevelopment Agency, which must also approve the plan before Kruger and a crew of painters can begin to install it--perhaps as soon as early next year.

But the 5-to-1 approval did not diminish the mural project’s continuing ability to be provocative--not just on political grounds, but in the context of process issues by which public art is coming to be planned and executed in the United States.

The Kruger project is to be a red, white and blue flag-like mural, 29 feet high and 218 feet long. It will nearly cover the entire south-facing wall of the Temporary Contemporary--the building’s most public exposure along First Street in the heart of Little Tokyo.

MOCA’s and the Temporary Contemporary’s names will be the focus of the blue-and-white section at the mural’s top left corner--suggesting the area of the American flag occupied by the stars. The stripes will be made up of red and white representations of nine politically charged questions, including “Who is beyond the law?” and “Who is free to choose?”

The mural will remain on view for as long as two years after it is completed. Since it will face a vacant piece of property that is scheduled for development, a new building next to the Temporary Contemporary may obscure the wall earlier than two years after completion--in which case, MOCA officials said, the mural will be painted over,

Thursday’s vote by the Cultural Affairs Commission was the second time the city board had formally approved the work. But the earlier vote was voided after a Little Tokyo community group objected to the graphic design originally proposed by Kruger in which the Pledge of Allegiance would have dominated the middle of the flag design, with the questions surrounding the Pledge.

Some Japanese-Americans objected to being confronted by the Pledge of Allegiance--in letters 6 feet high--because of massive civil rights violations committed by the federal government against people of Japanese descent who were placed in World War II internment camps. Alan Sieroty, a Cultural Affairs Commission member, noted that the board failed to anticipate the emotional reaction.

“We were caught without adequate sensitivity to the lingering pain,” Sieroty said. “We should not have been so insensitive . . . so ignorant. But we were.”

Objections by Little Tokyo residents and leaders precipitated a series of community meetings involving Kruger and local residents in which delicate negotiations were held over the wording. The process, which Kruger has emphasized is representative of an important, evolving component of some public art, resulted in elimination of the Pledge of Allegiance wording entirely, but retention of the questions.

“These questions should not be whispered,” said Kruger of the scale of the final version of the piece. The issue, she said, “was how to intervene in a public space and this was my resolution.”

Adolfo Nodal, general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department, noted that the project focuses attention to an evolving perception of public art as something that “is ultimately a consensus between two visions”--that of the artist and the community that will be called upon to live with and adjacent to the work.

Nodal said the playing off of these two elements may sometimes force public officials to become involved in what, in a pure sense, is an artistic decision. “It is hard for us--and potentially dangerous--to get involved in the artistic content,” Nodal told the commission before he recommended approval and support of the project to the redevelopment agency.

The redevelopment agency’s board must approve the work because it may technically conflict with some restrictions on billboards and regulations of the percentage of space in a billboard or sign that may be occupied by the actual wording. Sherri Geldin, the museum’s assistant director, said content of the Kruger mural had developed added significance as the Little Tokyo debate proceeded because of national and international political developments. She said importance of the artistic and political freedom of expression implicit in the work was emphasized by the summerlong debate in Congress over the appropriateness of federal support of controversial artworks.