LA's climate and it's singular nature join to create a unique gallery: the City itself. Michael Several has created a series of guides to Public Art in LA. Public Art serves a crucial role in the diverse precincts of LA by adorning open spaces and embellishing architecture. Mr. Several has identified monuments, sculpture and murals which celebrate our region's history, humanize our impersonal urban environment and help make our city feel like a home.

This map will get you to the downtown area. Each section will provide a detailed map indicating the exact location of each piece of public art.

El Pueblo de Los Angeles
Historic Monument

El Pueblo de Los Angeles is organized around a central square and marks the approximate location where the city began over two centuries ago. It contains a sequence of architectural types documenting more than a century of change. The park's 27 buildings stand as powerful reminders of an era that began in the early 19th Century when Los Angeles was a provincial town at the edge of the Spanish empire and continued through the early 20th Century when the city was becoming increasingly industrialized.

The Plaza is now a lively outdoor stage where tourists and residents of all ages participate in the public rituals and community events that connect the present with the past. Scattered throughout the park is a unique collection of bronze statues and outdoor murals. They give shape to the city's rich history by portraying some of the most significant people and events that define the character and identity of Los Angeles.

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Freeways

The freeways are a product of 20th century technology and one of the primary forces shaping the design and character of our contemporary city. The adoption of limited access super-highways as a basic urban transportation system after World War ** made Los Angeles a universally recognized metaphor for crushing rush hour traffic, choking smog and damaging urban sprawl. However, freeways also identified Los Angeles as a modern center shaped by progress and technology; it is cast as the world's first major city of the 20th century.

Large unbroken cement walls, symbolic associations with the city's character, and a guaranteed captive audience make freeways a particularly inviting but difficult and dangerous location for executing murals. In 1974, primarily under the County administered and federally financed Inner City Mural Project, works were painted in underpasses, alongside on-ramps, outside of retaining walls and along the sides of buildings facing freeways. The 1984 Summer Olympic Games made retaining walls next to traffic itself the most unusual canvases in the modern art world!.

In 1982, the Olympic Organizing Committee accepted a proposal by artists Alonzo Davis and Kent Twitchell to fund works by the city's prominent muralists along routes leading to the Coliseum. When difficulties arose in obtaining walls along surface streets, the California Department of Transportation which had a policy since 1979 of encouraging the placement of art along highways, offered sites on the Hollywood and Harbor Freeways.

Davis and Twitchell were joined by Glenna Boltuch Avila in selecting muralists for the project. After proposals were approved by the Olympic Organizing Committee, ten artists were each awarded $17,000 commissions. The muralists were responsible for paying for supplies, assistants, and the protective barriers that Caltrans required. Work was limited to weekends and non-rush hours, yet the murals were completed by May 1, 1984, 3 months before the beginning of the Olympic Games.
Many murals have been painted along the freeways of Los Angeles County since 1984 but only 5 are described here.