Board Orders Plan to Deal With Graffiti on Murals

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered its public works department to draft a comprehensive plan to deal with graffiti on murals.

The supervisors also agreed to commission an artist to restore one of his historic works in East Los Angeles, which was apparently painted over by a county graffiti abatement team.

Many art experts and historians see the painting over of Willie Herron’s renowned East Los Angeles mural, “The Wall that Cracked Open,” as a symbol of Los Angeles’ neglect of its murals, even though the area has come to be regarded as the nation’s most important center of the genre.

Los Angeles County is home to at least 2,500 community murals but lacks publicly financed agencies to track and maintain these works of art.

“This mural is recognized as being a benchmark to an art movement which has given pleasure and recognition to Los Angeles as a world art center,” said UCLA history professor Juan Gomez-Quinones. “Public agencies do have upon them a responsibility to preserve and foster that art.”

Supervisor Gloria Molina, in whose district the mural is located and who proposed the new plan, agreed.

“We have a policy in place, but it’s hit and miss,” she said. “There should be a process that’s respectful to the muralist, the community and [any] people who want to develop the property.”

In the last few years at least half a dozen significant murals have been scarred, first by graffiti and then, more severely, the artists contend, by public agencies painting out the graffiti.

It was unknown Tuesday how much the county would pay Herron to restore his work.

County officials denied that they painted over Herron’s mural, but some neighbors reported seeing county contractors covering graffiti on the property, which is owned by Herron’s family.

Herron told supervisors that when he painted the work in 1972, after the stabbing of his brother by gang members, he incorporated existing graffiti into the work.

“The ‘90s graffiti on top of it created a really beautiful layer,” he said, “and now I feel that layer has been destroyed.”

Herron thanked the board for its attention to the issue and for “the example, hopefully, it will set for the rest of the city and county.”