Eric Bjorgum, president of the Los Angeles Mural Conservancy, explains, “In 2010, the Ninth Circuit, in an opinion known as World Wide Rush, overturned a lower court decision and gave some discretion back to the city.” The World Wide Rush decision found that the city of Los Angeles had the right to make exceptions to its sign ban. saw an 11-year moratorium on murals, a dark phase of public art development. After years of arguing with sign companies about what was permissible, the city essentially made murals illegal because there was no distinction between murals and signs.
In the 1960s and ’70s the Southland was even known as “the mural capital of the world.”
Our endless sprawl creates the perfect canvas, and our art world is heavily influenced by Chicano muralists. Los Angeles is a city of a thousand murals.
