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like Ronald Rugan) soothed U5 inlO believing the war was abloodless, complllcri7.cd science demonstration of gigamic proportions.Youug American men with adroit rcflues trained by a video-gamc ,ullUTedemonstrated our superiority as a nation over Salldam Hussein throughvideo-screen 51rau:g;c air striku.

From the triumphant bron7.t general on public'sview of whidl is the underside of galloping hooves-to lIS more conlem-porny corporate versions, we find cumplcs of public an in the service ofdOlll;nancc. By their daily presence in Ollr lives. theseutworks intend topersuade liS of the justice of the aclS they represent. The power of thecorporate sponsor is embodied in the sculpture standing in fronl of thetnwering office building. These grand works, like their military predeces

in the parks, inspire a sense of awe hy their the importanceof the artist. Here, public art is unashamed in its intention 10 mediatebetween the public and the developer. In a "things go down bettcr withpublic art" menulity, the biller pills of development are delivered to thepublic. While percent-for-art bills have heulded developers' creation ofamen;l.ulC public phces as a positive side effecI of "growth,M every inch ofurban space is swallowcd by sk yscrapers and priYlli7.ed imo the socalledpublic sp;l.ce of shopping malls and corporate plaus. These developmentsprelletermine the public, selectingOUI the hamden. vendors, ;l.doleseents,urban poor. ;l.ml people of color. Planters. benches. and other Mpublicamenities" arc suspect as potential huards or public loitering places. Re-cent attemptS in Los Angeles to pass laws to StOp or severely resu'!cl push-

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10 fund public murals by ethnic artisu who work wilhin Los Angeles'sdiverse Chinese, African American, Korean, Thai, Chicano, and CentralAmerican neighborhoo

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strC1:u. The subject maller is as rdevant now,sixty yurs later, a s it wasthen. Murals depicting the domination of 1nd resistance by Los Angeb'sL1tinos or other populations of color provoke thesame official resinanee15 they did in 19]]. Despite these muuls h1ve been the onlyintCTvenlions in public Ipacelthat articuhtl: the presence of ethnicity.Architecturc and city planninghave done liule to accommodlle communi-ties of color in our city.

As competition for public space h1s grown, public art policies havehecome calcified and increasingly bureaucr;l!ic. An that is sanctioned haslustlhe political bite of the seventies murals. Nevertheless, a rich legacy ofIlluuls hu been produced since Amrriea Tropiea/wa.s pa.inled on OlveraSucct by the maenro. Thousands of public lnurals in phceswhere peoplelive :md wOIk have become tangible public monuments to the sharedexperience of communities of color. Chicano munls have provided thelcadership and thl: form for other communities to asSUt their presenceandanicuble their issues. Today, works appearthat speak of children caughtin lhe cross fire of gang warfare in the barrios ofSylmu, the hidden prob-lcm of AIDS in the South-Central African Amerie1n community, and thestruggles of immiRration and assimilation in the Korean community. Thescmural! have become monumellt'lhat serve as a community's memory.

The generations who grew up in neighborhoods where the land-sca.pe was doned by the mural movement have been influenced by theseworks. With few avenues open to lfaining.a.OlI art production, ethnicteenagers have crealed thegraffiti art that has become another method ofresisting privati7.Cd public space. As the fim visual ut form entirely devel-oped by youth culture, it has become the focus of increasingly severercprinls by .1lIhoritieswho spend fifly-two million dollan in theCounty of Los Angeles to abate what they refer to as the Mskin cancer ofsociety.M It is no accident that Ihe proliferation of graffiti is concurrentwith the reduction of all youlh recreation and aru programs in the schools.

Working with communities in producing public artworks hal putme into COntut with many of the'e youths. On one occasion, I was calledto a l ocal high school after convinced one of the young Great Wallproduction tum members that he should retUrn to school. The urgent

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message from the boy in the principal's office nid, MI need you to comehere right away because I'm going to get thrown outof school again.-My du l with the boy, formulated overa long mentorship, W1S that hewould not quit school again without talking to me fint. I arrived to findthe principal lOwering over the young cho/o, who holding his hu d ina defiant manner I had seenover and over in my work with the gangs.This Stance, r elniniscent of a unccremoniously Mholdingyour mug,M is about maintaining dignity in adverse circumstances. Theprincipal was completely frustrated. MYou've wrinen on the Ichool', w111sand you simply do not have respect for other people's property. Tell me,would you do this in your own housd- I couldn't help but smile at hisadmonition, despite the seriousness of thesituation.This boy was animportant graffiti artist in his community. I had visited his house and seenthe walls of his room, where every inch was covered wilh his intricatewritings. Two diHerent notions of beauty and order were operaling, aswell as a dispute about ownership of the school. The boy's opinion wasthat he had aesthetically improvcd the property, not dcstroyed it.

At this time the conditions of our communitiesare worse than thosethat prC1:ipimcd the civil righu activism of the sixtics and seventies. Fifty-twO percent of all Afric1n American children and forty-twO percent of allLatino children are living in poverty. Dropout rates exceed high schoolgraduation rates in these communities. What, then, is the role of a sociallyrcsJlolllible public utili? As the wealthy and poor arc increasingly polar-ized in our society, faee-to-hcc urban confrontalionsoccur, often withcatastrophic consequences, Clin public art avoid coming down on the sideof wealth and dominance in that confrontation? How can we as artisunoid becoming accomplicCl to If we chose nOt to look attriumphs over nations and neighborhoods 11 victories and advancemenu,what monuments could we build? How can we crute a public memoryfor a many-cultured society? Whose story shall we tell?

Of grutest interelt to me is the invention of systems of voicegivingMfor those left without public venues in which 10 speak. Soci11lyresponsible artists from marginalized communities have a puticul.r rc-sponsibility to uticulate Iheconditions of their peopleand 10 provide

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catalysu for cllangc. since perceptions of us as individuals are tied to theconditions of our communities in a racially unsophisticated society.Wecannot escape that responsibility even when we choose to try; we are madeolthe and dust of our anceSlors in a continuing history. Being acatalyst for change will change us lisa.

We can evaluate ourselves by the processes with which wechooseto make an . not simply by the lr t objects we crute. Is the artwork theruult of a privlte act in a public Focusing o n t he object devoid ofthe creuive process used to achieve it has bankrupted Eurocentric mod-ernist and postmodernin traditions. Art processes. jun as art objects, maybe culturally specific. and with no single aesthetic. a diversesociety willgenerate very different forms of public HI .

Who is the public now that it has changed color? How do people ofvarious ethnic and class groups use public space? What ideas do wewantto place in public memory? Where does art begin and end?Artins have theunique ability to transcend designated spheres of activity.What representssomethiJlg deeper and more hopeful about the future of our ethnically andclass-divided cities arc collaborations that move well beyond the artist andarchitect to the artist and the historian. scientist. environmentalist. or socialservice provider. Such collaborations are mandated by the seriousness ofthe tasks at hand. They bring a range of people into conversations abouttheir visions for their neighborhoods or their nations. Finding a place forthose ideas in monuments that are constructed of the soil and spirit of thepeople is the most challenging task for public artists in this time.

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