pleasantville

Frank Romero

On view January 2025

The Museum of Latin American Art is pleased to exhibit Pleasantville, the acclaimed creation of Chicano artist, Frank Romero. The unique and large mural (329 ½ x 136 x 10 inches), was created for the 1998 Academy Award nominated film Pleasantville, starring Jenny Lewis, Tobey McGuire, Paul Walker, Jeffery Daniels and Reese Witherspoon. The movie was written and directed by Gary Ross, with an original score by Randy Newman.

In the black and white movie, the introduction of Romero’s mural, with its vibrant colors and images ties the themes of the film and musical composition into an artistic highlight.

MOLAA, in collaboration with the Artist and his studio, will publicly conserve the artwork throughout the first half of 2025. By inviting the public to witness the artistic conservation process, MOLAA hopes to demonstrate and share the importance of artwork conservation and the role community plays in the patrimony of local institutions.

Frank Romero

A pioneer of the Chicana/o art movement, Frank Romero (b. 1941, Los Angeles) is counted among the earliest and most influential of its participants. Romero’s visual explorations of Chicanidad have gone on to become cornerstones of this period in art history that arose from El Movimiento, the social and political civil rights movement that began in the early 1970s. With a career spanning seven decades, Romero uses various mediums, such as paintings, murals, neon, and sculptures, to explore themes that relate to the Chicano experience, his Latin American heritage, and popular culture, creating works that are reflective of the multiculturalism that is East Los Angeles.