Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles

Born in Santiago, Chile, Isabel Rojas-Williams has lived in Southern California for the past 39 years and has actively studied, documented, and lectured on the social-political art movements of Los Angeles. She has taught art history at California State University, Los Angeles, where she earned her Master’s degree, and has been the curator of multiple exhibitions documenting the city’s rich legacy of urban art. Among her many professional accomplishments is the inclusion of her thesis Los Angeles Street Mural Movement, 1930-2009 in the research archives of Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in México City. Rojas-Williams has received numerous awards for her curatorial, civic, and creative contributions to Los Angeles. In 2009, Rojas-Williams was appointed as an advisor for the “Siqueiros Interpretative Center” and serves as the mayor’s art liaison to the Latino Heritage Committee, African American Committee, and Asian American Committee. She is also a board member of Los Angeles-Mexico Sister Cities program. In 2010, Rojas-Williams’ video Siqueiros: a Muralist in Exile, which includes her research on murals from the United States, Argentina, and Chile, was exhibited at the Museum of Latin American Art, as part of the Siqueiros Paisajista/Siqueiros: Landscape Painter exhibition. The video was honored by Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera for documenting the artistic connection between Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. The Pablo Neruda Foundation has also added her research on Siqueiros to their archives. In her role as the Executive Director of The Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, Rojas-Williams is participating with the Department of City Planning in the crafting of a mural ordinance that will lift the existing 2002 mural moratorium in private property in Los Angeles.