MOCA Commissions Mural, Then Whitewashes It
A crew started whitewashing the Blu mural at about 10 a.m. Photo by Gary Leonard.
Artwork Painted Over Day Before Media Preview of New Show
by Ryan Vaillancourt, Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, December 9, 2010 2:22 PM PST
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – It seemed a novel idea: In advance of its recently announced April 2011 show on street art, the Museum of Contemporary Art offered one of its walls to a prominent street artist.

The artist, an Italian who goes by the name Blu, finished the work. This morning, the museum painted over it.

The paint was hardly dry on the mural, which covered the entire north-facing wall of MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary with depictions of wooden caskets draped in dollar bills, when the museum literally whitewashed the piece.
A MOCA spokeswoman would not comment on the whitewashing, but the piece may have struck a delicate nerve center that sits just steps from the wall. The piece faces the Veterans Administration healthcare building on Temple Street. The dollar bills draped on Blu’s caskets seem to be an overt replacement of the customary American flags that cover the coffins of soldiers killed in wartime.
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