Project Objectives
The project has three major objectives:

• to complete the final conservation—consolidation and cleaning—of the mural;
• to construct a shelter that will ensure protection of the mural in the future; and
• to make the mural accessible to visitors by constructing a viewing platform, and by installing an interpretive center that provides the public with information about the artist, the mural, and the mural's historic and artistic context.

	Schematic design of the mural viewing platform. Image: Pugh + Scarpa Architects

Project Overview
David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the great Mexican muralists of the twentieth century, painted América Tropical in 1932 on the second story exterior south wall of Italian Hall, a large brick building located in the center of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument in downtown Los Angeles. Measuring some 80-by-18 feet, América Tropical depicted a Mexican Indian, crucified on a double cross beneath an American eagle, with sharp shooters taking aim at the eagle.

Commissioned by the building's tenant, F.K. Ferenz, the mural was controversial from the start and within a few months of its completion, was partially covered with white paint and completely painted out within a decade. Renewed interest prompted the mural to be uncovered in the early 1980s.

In 1988, the Getty Conservation Institute entered into an official partnership with El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument (a department of the City of Los Angeles) to conserve the mural. In the years that followed, the GCI analyzed the mural materials, worked with consultants to perform the first phase of conservation treatment, measured environmental conditions, and digitally documented the mural's condition.

The walls of the Italian Hall—including the wall on which the mural is painted—were seismically stabilized by the City of Los Angeles in 1995. In 1997, the GCI undertook a thorough condition survey; in 2002 it stabilized the mural and, with the help of the J. Paul Getty Museum, installed temporary protection over it.

The schematic designs for the new shelter, viewing platform, and exhibit center by Pugh + Scarpa of Santa Monica have been approved. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2009.

Last updated: March 2009