Mural’s lasting morass

The prolonged campaign to unveil a historic Olvera Street mural by famed Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros has faced apathy from the arts community, political opposition, budget overruns and bureaucratic bumbling over the last three decades.

Now, the sputtering effort to put the controversial mural on public view for the first time since its shocking debut in 1932 is facing one of its biggest challenges: the threatened loss of support from the project’s most influential and steadfast patron, the Getty Conservation Institute.

The arts agency, part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, has threatened to pull out of the project if Los Angeles city officials do not raise the estimated $1.4 million needed to complete it. The Getty’s deadline is July 1, 2005.

If the city does not raise at least 75% of the money by that time, the Getty will withdraw the balance of the $2.6 million it has committed to the mural project, which it has spearheaded since the late 1980s. That would be a blow that could keep the acclaimed mural -- a provocative 80-by-18-foot work titled “America Tropical” -- under a shroud for the foreseeable future.

The Getty’s ultimatum was issued last fall in a three-page letter, obtained last week by the Los Angeles Times. It was written by Tim Whalen, director of the Getty’s conservation group, and addressed to Ed Navarro, who recently resigned as general manager of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, the troubled city agency that oversees Olvera Street.

In the letter, Whalen indicated that the time had come to “transfer the day-to-day management and oversight” of the mural project to El Pueblo, adding: “As is true with all conservation and construction projects, the owner of the historic resource must provide the leadership to carry the work forward to its logical conclusion.”

The Getty’s move put the burden squarely on a small, underfunded and grossly mismanaged city agency that is the subject of a scathing city audit made public earlier this year. The audit exposed long-festering management problems at El Pueblo, including mishandling of funds and lack of leadership.

In addition to Navarro’s resignation, one El Pueblo employee was terminated in the wake of the disclosures and another was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Even before the ultimatum and the current crisis, however, some supporters of the mural worried that the Getty was looking to extract itself from a project that had gotten bogged down in a bureaucratic morass, complicated by conflicts among El Pueblo’s nine appointed commissioners and Olvera Street’s 77 merchants, not all of whom see eye to eye on the mural restoration. One source said that Whalen, who inherited the mural project from his predecessor, Miguel Angel Corzo, had privately tried to determine what community reaction would be if the mural project were never finished.

“I don’t know if they were looking for a way out, but I do know they had grown very tired of the politics,” said El Pueblo Commissioner Lisa See, who has worked closely with Getty officials. “I think they felt, ‘If these people don’t want us, if they don’t really appreciate what we’re giving them and just give us the runaround, then why should we bother?’ ”

Although the Getty’s tough stance has sparked renewed interest in the mural from L.A. city officials, it has also brought to the surface a backlash against the wealthy arts organization. UCLA history professor Juan Gomez-Quinones says the Getty should end the mural saga by taking charge of the completion itself.

“What has the Getty invested in Latino art and culture?” asks Gomez-Quinones, who served two terms on the El Pueblo commission. “It’s a pittance, really. They are the ones who have the wood to hit the ball out of the park. Now it just ought to be finished so we can stop this walking around in circles.”

Getty officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the matter.

William Estrada, a curator at El Pueblo, said he watched the Siqueiros mural slip to the back burner under Navarro’s tenure. And he watched as Getty officials became increasingly frustrated with the agency’s leadership.

“The Getty’s interest and commitment did not wane during that time, but their patience did,” Estrada said. “They were not getting return phone calls or return e-mails. There was just a drastic drop in the level of communication.”

The chaos at El Pueblo has clearly hurt the mural effort. The agency, for one, may have lost a $60,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for the project because it missed a routine deadline to renew the funding, which expired May 31. City officials say they are now trying to salvage the grant.

But the neglect goes even deeper.

In his October letter, also addressed to El Pueblo Commission President Mike Gatto, Whalen outlines the Getty’s proposal for completing the Siqueiros project by Dec. 31, 2006. Echoing an oft-repeated prediction, he wrote, “Given the leadership of both of our teams, I think that we are now at a point where Angelinos may soon see the mural for the first time” in decades. According to current El Pueblo officials, the Getty never got an answer to its letter.

Controversy at inception

Siqueiros painted his star-crossed mural on a second-story wall of the old Italian Hall, at the north end of Olvera Street on the corner of Main Street and what is now Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. The mural graced an exterior wall facing City Hall and overlooking a former beer garden on the flat roof of the one-story building next door. Although the painting is sheathed with a protective covering, passersby can gaze up from below and imagine what the mural might have looked like.

From the moment it was first unveiled, “America Tropical” has inspired passions both pro and con. Siqueiros, an avowed communist who had been jailed in Mexico for his political activities, was invited to paint a theme that some L.A. civic leaders thought would be innocuous. But on the eve of the work’s Oct. 9 debut, the radical painter went alone to the work site and feverishly painted the mural’s dramatic central figure overnight: a crucified Indian peasant in a loincloth with a predatory eagle, symbolizing imperial power, overhead.

Onlookers gasped at the sight. At the dedication, muralist Dean Cornwell, who sponsored the fresco, predicted the work would awaken a new appreciation for wall paintings that would give the city “something beautiful in the place of something blank.”

Many, however, didn’t appreciate the political message. Siqueiros, one of a troika of socially conscious Mexican muralists, which included Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, was soon deported, and the whitewashing of his mural began two years later.

“America Tropical” is one of three murals painted by Siqueiros during his Depression-era stay in Los Angeles, only two of which survive. The other, in much better condition, was moved three years ago from a private home to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where it’s on permanent display.

Although out of public view for more than seven decades, the Olvera Street mural is still considered the most powerful of the three. The very memory of “America Tropical” helped spark the politically motivated art that flourished with the Chicano Movement in the 1960s.

“If Los Angeles is the mural capital of the world, it all begins here, in the birthplace of Los Angeles in 1932,” said Luis Garza, a former Getty consultant who hopes to raise awareness of the mural by mounting a multimedia exhibition about the artist, who died in 1974 at age 77. “Siqueiros set the seed for an art movement that develops in Los Angeles three decades later.”

The mural remained almost forgotten until the late 1960s, when a nascent rescue effort got underway. The campaign didn’t gain steam until the Getty got involved about 20 years later, bringing its clout and resources to the project.

The current three-part plan for the mural started with its meticulous conservation, which preserves but does not restore the severely faded work. Over the last decade, the Getty has completed the first stage of the conservation, along with architectural plans for the second phase: construction of a rooftop bridge and viewing platform.

The third stage calls for an interpretive and educational center inside the Sepulveda House, located three doors south of the mural. The city has set aside $1 million for the interpretive center in the historic building, conceived as the gateway to the mural site, and has retrofitted the building for earthquake safety.

The incomplete work at Sepulveda House stands as a sad testament to the delays, false starts and dashed hopes that have plagued the mural project. Just inside the entrance, a new elevator shaft for lifting visitors to the viewing platform remains dark. From Main Street, with the entryway reeking of urine and the locked glass door smudged with graffiti, passersby can get a glimpse of a dramatic digital mural depicting Siqueiros at work with the L.A. River far beneath him, winding through scenes representing labor and migration conditions of the 1930s.

That mural, created by L.A. arts advocate Judy Baca and the UCLA Cesar Chavez/SPARC Digital Mural Lab, was intended to greet visitors at the Siqueiros mural, which Getty officials announced in 2002 would be open this year. That was only one of many such predictions that have disappointed supporters over the years.

“It’s like crying wolf the umpteenth time,” said Vivien Bonzo, owner of La Golondrina Cafe on Olvera Street, who made her own published prediction of the mural’s imminent completion 15 years ago. “I don’t blame members of the community for believing it’s just a farce. It’s the same old story: The city has money for other projects downtown when this project has been languishing for decades. We’ve always called Olvera Street the bastard child of L.A. because the city never really cared for it.”

The Getty ultimatum and the crisis at El Pueblo have spurred city officials to move to rescue the project.

Acting general manager Rushmore Cervantes, appointed by Mayor James K. Hahn to pick up the pieces at El Pueblo, plans to put forth a proposal next month that could accelerate the mural construction schedule, thereby using rather than losing money already committed by the Getty and the city.

Rather than waiting for the full amount to be raised, Cervantes will recommend immediately using the city’s $1 million to complete the bridge and viewing platform, instead of saving it for the interpretive center.

That way, at least the mural would be on display, even though the public would not have second-floor access to it. The entrance through Sepulveda House and the interpretive exhibits would be completed when the rest of the money becomes available.

Cervantes said the Getty quickly endorsed the preliminary plan, which must win approval from the commission and city. Mural supporters were also enthusiastic, arguing that the final fundraising would be much easier if private donors and corporate sponsors could see physical results.

“This is a visual town,” said Gatto, the commission president. “If we can get the vision open so people can come to see it, we’ll have such momentum that no one will stop it.”

Meanwhile, fundraising efforts continue. City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, whose district encompasses Olvera Street, recently reserved $65,000 in city funds to hire a fundraising consultant for the project.

“It’s a travesty,” Villaraigosa said. “This has been a commission that the city has paid very little attention to and under-invested in over the years. That’s why I stepped forward. My sense was that the city had not done what it could to promote ‘America Tropical’ and El Pueblo as a whole.”

Villaraigosa’s wife, Corina, also volunteered to help organize an April fundraiser for the mural, held in the recently restored, turn-of-the-century Italian Hall. The event netted $15,000, 50% over expectations.

“It really revived interest in the project,” said El Pueblo Commissioner Lisa Baca-Sigala, who helped organize the event. “We didn’t have any money. It was all done like stone soup -- everybody put something in, and it came out really good. It just demonstrated there’s a tremendous amount of goodwill to make this happen.”

Unfortunately, the event also revived divisions among commissioners, who used a subsequent meeting to bitterly argue about the way the fundraiser was handled.

Some merchants, such as Conchita Sousa, whose family store is directly beneath the mural, are just anxious for the bickering to stop and the project to be completed. At Casa de Sousa, visitors continually ask about the mural, which they think is ready to view. Someday, she keeps telling them.

She sometimes shares the story of her late father, Tony Sousa, who came to Los Angeles as a boy and used to take sodas to Siqueiros while the master was at work upstairs. And she passes out information about the educational multimedia exhibit, “Legacy and Legend, Siqueiros and America Tropical: Censorship Defied,” being planned by Garza and her uncle, Jose Luis Sedano, who has helped in the store since her father contracted Alzheimer’s seven years ago.

“We don’t know why [the project] is taking so long,” said Sousa. “Is it the city? Is it the funding? It’s just frustrating for me. It’s like the mural is still being censored because we can’t see it.”