Judith F. Baca

Professor Emerita
Department: César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
judybaca@ucla.edu
Website
Keywords: Art, Mexico

Judith Francisca Baca, native Angeleno, is a visual artist, an arts activist, a community leader and a professor of visual art.

As a visual artist, Judith Baca is best known for her large-scale public murals. Her art involves extensive community organizing and participation, addressing multi-cultural audiences. In the internationally known GREAT WALL OF LOS ANGELES mural in the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel, Baca designed a work which incorporated 40 ethnic scholars, 450 multi-cultural neighborhood youth, 40 assisting artists and over 100 support staff to paint a half mile long mural on the ethnic history of California. Painted over five summers, this exciting work describes decade by decade the contributions and struggles of California's diverse peoples from prehistoric times to the 1950's. Unique among murals in its conceptual approach, the GREAT WALL also provided an educational program of training in inter-racial relations for the project's participants and for the people in the surrounding community.