Home »Community Murals »The Boyle Heights Mural Pilot Program
Community Murals
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This section features murals that are part of The Boyle Heights Mural Pilot Program. This program was originally established in 2005 by then City Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa when he was the Councilmember for the Boyle Heights neighborhood in CD14. Center for the Art Eagle Rock administered the program as a non-profit. ICU Art handled the production and permitting of the murals through the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
In 2004 and 2005 twenty murals in the Boyle Heights area were cited by the City of LA because they did not have the proper permits as fine art murals. Realizing that important examples of our cultural mural legacy were in danger, Councilmember Villaraigosa contributed funds to the program to get as many of these murals permitted as possible.
Through this program, the original artists were given an opportunity to restore or repaint their murals as long as it went through the permitting process with the City of LA. In the end, ten murals were restored, cleaned or repainted. Unfortunately we lost ten other murals. There were a variety of reasons that we lost those ten murals. In some cases the building owners simply did not want to deal with the issue, and they painted out the murals before they could be saved. In other cases, the murals were located in such a way on the building that they could not be permitted.
Stash Maleski is the Production Manager for this program. ICU Art still maintains six murals as part of the Boyle Heights Mural Program to make sure these murals stay free of vandalism. If a mural does get hit by vandalism, we document the damage and have one of the original muralists touch up the mural to restore it to its original appearance. ICU Art does this maintenance free of charge and has donated all of our efforts for this program.
We will be adding more photos to this section, and will eventually have all of the murals from the program featured along with some of the murals that got painted out. We will also update this section with more information about the program.