WATTS TOWERS ARTS CENTER CAMPUS

Muralist Richard Wyatt painted the Cecil Fergerson mural located on the Watts Towers Arts Center's south wall in 1988. It is a tribute to Cecil Fergerson, who was widely credited with fostering African-American and Latin-American art communities in Los Angeles for over 50 years and was named a "Living Cultural Treasure" by the city in 1999. While working at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Fergerson co-founded the Black Arts Council to advocate for African-American artists and support their community. His advocacy at LACMA and BAC led to seminal exhibitions of African-American art in the early 1970s. Fergerson and Claude Booker's work through the BAC produced results, namely in
the form of two LACMA exhibitions," Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, and Timothy Washington" in 1971, and "Panorama" in 1972, featuring Noah Purifoy, John Outterbridge, and Betye
Saar. These exhibits paved the way for LACMA's 1976 exhibition "Two Centuries of Black American Art," which traveled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and the Brooklyn
Museum. The BAC ceased activities in 1974 following the death of Claude Booker.