AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

The Los Angeles County’s Civic Art collection is comprised of over 600 contemporary and historic permanent public artworks located across County-owned property. These artworks are cultural assets that belong to and are enjoyed by all Los Angeles County residents. In recent efforts to provide equitable resources through the Civic Art Division’s commissions and programming, community engagement has been a focused goal. Artists are required to provide activities and feedback from community when fabricating a new artwork, ensuring that the artwork is truly representative of the communities where it resides. The natural extension to this work is to continue the engagement throughout the lifetime of the artwork, through artist activities, educational curriculum, and conservation projects. 

One of the collection’s most treasured artworks, Paul Botello’s Inner Resources mural, was created in 2000 at City Terrace Park. The artwork is one of the largest murals in Los Angeles and is the most often referenced of Botello’s works. Because of the mural’s significance to the community, the mural’s conservation was an ideal opportunity to support the growth of developing conservators and public artists from the surrounding City Terrace and East Los Angeles communities. The Civic Art Division released an open call for the Inner Resources Mural Conservation Apprenticeship Project in Winter 2023 for those interested or emerging in the conservation field and emerging public artists who have a connection or investment in the City Terrace and East Los Angeles communities. The open call provided a rare and paid opportunity to learn about the importance of preservation and participate in the conservation of a significant artwork in their community. 

Four artist apprentices and two emerging conservators were selected by a diverse panel of conservators, cultural workers, and the artist Paul Botello. Work began in Spring 2024 under the supervision of Site & Studio Conservation, led by Kiernan Graves and supported by a team of conservation professionals. The apprentices were given extensive training on identification and examination of condition phenomena and artist materials, agents of deterioration and risks to murals, conservation treatment skills, technical photography/documentation, and an introduction to analytical techniques. The artist Paul Botello worked on the larger areas of loss and mentored the apprentices about his artistic process giving the artists the opportunity to incorporate skills required for restoration.

Public artworks, and especially murals in the East Los Angeles community, provide inspiration, acting as both beautifier, educator, and witness. Communities like East Los Angeles, at the risk of displacement and gentrification greatly benefit from the investment in conservation, as one perceives the erasure of the visual stories of the artists and artworks as the erasure of the communities themselves. When community participates in the conservation of artworks that hold value to their culture and ancestral pasts, it creates an exchange of passion and appreciation for the artworks' meaning and preservation for the conservators, the participants, all that witness the conservation in action, and all who live in the community with an artwork that is cared for. The Civic Art Division hopes to continue this apprenticeship model that centers community knowledge and leadership for future conservation projects, as the response through this project amplifies the need for the conservation field to engage with communities, not as our presumed role as teacher, but as collaborator.