The Chicano mural that overcame censorship to shine in the heart of Los Angeles
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is bringing back Barbara Carrasco’s ‘L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective,’ a 1981 masterpiece that spent decades in storage
In the lower corner of Barbara Carrasco’s monumental 1981 mural, L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective, there is an assembly of characters. Among them are Chicana activists like Anna Nieto Gomez, sports icons like Fernando Valenzuela, Mayor Tom Bradley, and celebrities including Jane Fonda, musician Rick James, and actor Martin Sheen, who is of Spanish-Irish descent. Sheen, the star of Apocalypse Now specifically requested to be included in the painting to transcend time, according to Carrasco. The mural also features young artists who helped create the work, and tucked among them is a smiling woman with glasses — the painter’s own mother.
