Read an Academic Passage

[1]In many cities, murals are more than decoration. Because they are painted on walls that everyone passes, they can communicate history and values to people who might never enter a museum. For this reason, many art historians now treat murals as one of the ways in which communities define who they are.

[2]In the early twentieth century, Mexican painters such as Diego Rivera covered public buildings with scenes of workers and Indigenous peoples to celebrate national history. Similar strategies later appeared in neighborhoods in the United States, where murals honor migration stories or local civil rights leaders who are missing from official monuments. Location matters as well: a mural on a school or market is seen every day, so its images become part of ordinary life rather than a distant history lesson.

[3]Murals can also become contested. City governments sometimes pay for them to attract tourists, but this support may dilute their original message. A mural that began as a protest against inequality can be reinterpreted as a harmless attraction once it appears on travel websites and becomes a popular background for photographs. Murals, in other words, are not neutral decorations: their meaning depends on who controls them and on how audiences choose to see them.