The downtown L.A. mural that was a prophetic backdrop to ICE street protests

As protesters swarmed downtown Los Angeles to denounce ICE raids successful their communities and the deployment of the National Guard, a potent representation kept flashing crossed tv screens and societal media: officers successful riot cogwheel facing disconnected against flag- and sign-waving demonstrators successful beforehand of a strikingly resonant, reddish mural posing a bid of queries interrogating the precise quality of powerfulness and control.

Barbara Kruger’s 30-by-191-foot “Questions” takes up the full broadside partition of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary warehouse building, facing Temple Street and — notably — the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. Like galore of Kruger’s astir iconic images, including her celebrated 1989 termination rights poster, “Your Body Is a Battleground,” the mural features words successful starkly wide graphic plan — successful this case, achromatic letters connected a reddish inheritance asking 9 now-prophetic questions:

“Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is escaped to choose? Who does the time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”

The mural was commissioned successful 1990 by erstwhile MOCA curator Ann Goldstein, who is present astatine the the Art Institute of Chicago.

Former MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel posted a TV screenshot of protesters successful beforehand of the mural connected Sunday with the caption, “#Barbara Krugers #moca mural doing its creation occupation arsenic the riots against #ice devour LA.”

Reached for remark Monday, Schimmel added that Kruger “understood the value and powerfulness of a mural facing the then-new Federal Building. Multiple generations of MOCA unit person brought it backmost to beingness due to the fact that of its profundity.”

Kruger, a longtime L.A. resident, responded Monday to The Times’ petition for remark astir the mural’s immersion successful this fraught infinitesimal of metropolis history, penning via email: “This provocation is giving Trump what helium wants: the infinitesimal helium tin state martial law. As if that’s not already successful play.”

In a YouTube video posted to MOCA’s website erstwhile the depository reinstalled the mural successful 2018, Kruger says: “There was a precise disposable partition connected the broadside of this building, and it was an accidental to marque a connection astir pridefulness and prominence and powerfulness and power and fear. The questions were ever the important portion of the work.”

At different constituent successful the video, she adds: “One would anticipation that successful the 30 years since, things would person changed a bit. And things person changed. For the bully and for the bad, and for everything successful between.”

Images of “Questions” abound connected societal media, including connected X, wherever a fewer users recognized the value of the creation down the protesters. Misinformation has been rampant connected societal media, and 1 station showed a photograph of a masked idiosyncratic creeping beneath the mural with the assertion that the idiosyncratic “broke into the MOCA Museum and destroyed everything.”

A MOCA typical debunked that assertion Monday, saying that the depository closed early, astatine astir 1:30 p.m. Sunday, “out of an abundance of caution and for the information and well-being of our unit and visitors,” and that it expected to unfastened again, per its mean operating hours, connected Thursday. The depository is ever closed Monday done Wednesday.

The lone harm to the Geffen Contemporary was immoderate graffiti that the depository said could beryllium removed.

Cleanup continues aft a nighttime of protests successful downtown Los Angeles connected June 9, 2025.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Adding a hyper-meta creation moment, MOCA’s existent durational performance, “Police State” by Pussy Riot frontwoman Nadya Tolokonnikova, continued until 6 p.m. wrong the building, conscionable without its accustomed unrecorded audience. The show consists of Tolokonnikova sitting astatine a bare woody array wrong of a corrugated alloy operation resembling a Russian situation cell.

Tolokonnikova, who spent 2 years successful a Russian situation pursuing a show successful Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, spent those hours Sunday broadcasting unrecorded audio of the protests extracurricular mixed with her ain heartbeat to the bare museum.

“Police State Exhibit Is Closed Due To The Police State,” she wrote successful a station connected X.

“Durational show is simply a scary happening to measurement into: erstwhile you said you’re going to amusement up, you can’t conscionable permission simply due to the fact that of the National Guard had a whim to inhabit the city, truthful my prime was to enactment and proceed doing my occupation arsenic an artist,” she said successful a statement.