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player ready...An alderman is demanding to know why colorful murals honoring Mexican culture at a Pilsen CTA station were painted over with white paint, but the transit agency Friday said it stopped the practice a year ago.
Late Thursday, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, of the 25th Ward, received messages notifying him that some of the murals at the station were painted over with white paint, said Rebecca Evans, a spokeswoman for the office. That prompted him to email the CTA and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office seeking answers. He issued a statement calling the damage “utterly reprehensible and disrespectful” to the artists and culture in Pilsen.
“I have zero tolerance for the whitewashing of our community and I’m in touch with some of the original artists to discuss re-creating the murals on the station walls,” he wrote in a statement.
But Friday afternoon, the CTA said its crews did not paint over any of the murals this week. But it’s possible crews painted over areas that had previously been painted white, said Brian Steele, a spokesman for the agency. The agency did previously paint over portions of the mural because of graffiti or other damage, but it stopped that practice more than a year ago, Steele said. He said the agency was as committed as the Pilsen community is to preserving the public art.
“The artwork was intended as a temporary art installation and unfortunately over the years, we’ve seen a lot of graffiti and weather-related deterioration,” Steele said by phone.
The city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation was not involved because the murals are on CTA property, a spokeswoman said in an email.
The backlash over the white paint comes as the CTA has been working on a project to restore some of the art. The agency was working with the National Museum of Mexican Art and an artist who worked with one of the original artists who worked on the station’s murals, said Catherine Hosinski, a spokeswoman for the CTA.
Carlos Tortolero, president and founder of the National Museum of Mexican Art, said by phone Friday that staff at the museum has talked with the CTA for years, giving the agency recommendations of artists who could restore the original murals. Many of the murals and public art at the station were done by artist Francisco Mendoza, Tortolero said. Mendoza died in 2012.
“We support restoring Francisco Mendoza’s murals, but we don’t support whitewashing of any murals,” Tortolero said.
He wasn’t sure if any of the work to restore the murals had started. Evans said Sigcho-Lopez was told the CTA would share with his office by next week a plan to begin restoration of the murals.
The murals have adorned the station since the 1990s, when artists and about 30 students, many of Mexican descent, created the art, the Tribune previously reported. The effort was part of a program called “adopt a station.”
While the art paid homage to the neighborhood’s Mexican community, it also has helped curb a graffiti problem at the station, CTA President Dorval Carter told the Tribune in 2016.
“The art piece was so respected by the community that they didn’t graffiti it,” Carter has said. “It has withstood the test of time.”
In August 2018, Streets and Sanitation workers removed a taxpayer-funded mural at the Paulina Station on the Brown Line after someone complained about it via the city’s 311 service.
baiduhai’s Mary Wisniewski contributed.