Artist Judy Baca Keynote Address at NALAC Leadership Institute

Keynote Address by renowned artist, educator, and scholar Judy Baca closing the 16th annual Leadership Institute of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) that will take place July 11-16, 2015, at The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Downtown Campus. The Leadership Institute convenes Latino arts leaders for an intensive, one-week training in nonprofit arts management and leadership development.

16th NALAC Leadership Institute
Keynote Address by Judy Baca
Saturday, July 16, 2016 at 2:00pm
UTSA Downtown Campus, Aula Canaria Auditorium, Buena Vista Building
Free and Open to the Public
RSVP: nli2016.eventbrite.com

What sets Baca’s work as a visual artist apart from many other artists, is an inspired ability to teach and a creative pursuit of relevancy in developing educational and community based art methodologies. Baca has stood for art in the service of equity for all people and the integration of one’s ethics with creative expression. Baca is a painter and muralist, monument builder, and scholar who have been teaching art in the UC system since 1984. She was the founder of the first City of Los Angeles Mural Program in 1974, which evolved into a community arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) which was has been creating sites of public memory since 1976. She continues to serve as its artistic director and focuses her creative energy in the UCLA@SPARC Digital/Mural Lab, employing digital technology to create social justice art.

Pictured: The Great Wall of Los Angeles is ‘tattooed’ along a flood control channel in the San Fernando Valley and employed over 400 at risk youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members. The Great Wall depicts a mile long multi-cultural history of California from pre-history through the 1950’s. It was begun in 1976 and plans are underway for its next four decades of evolution.