The Mural on the Art Museum's Own Wall Is New. Most of La Jolla's Murals Are Already Gone.

Walk the corner of Cuvier Street and Coast Boulevard this week and you will see something that was not there a month ago: a large-scale image on the south-facing wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, two figures in a garden of cacti and succulents, carrying bouquets of gladiolas and birds of paradise. It is called "Remembrance," and it is the newest work in a public art program that has been quietly reshaping the visual character of this village since 2010, one privately funded, privately sited, temporary installation at a time.

Most people who pass it will assume it is permanent. It is not. Almost nothing in this collection is.

An image made in 1989, installed for the first time on the museum's own wall

"Remembrance" is the work of Los Angeles-based artist Joey Terrill, and the image itself is not new. Terrill created it in 1989, a self-portrait with his then-partner Robert Ward set against a botanical backdrop that reads as both beautiful and threatening. That tension was the point. The piece captures the cultural climate of the 1980s during the HIV/AIDS crisis, a period when many of Terrill's friends were dying of the illness while Ward supported him through the grief.

Terrill chose this particular image for this particular site because he believed most passersby would be able to engage with it without needing the full history spelled out.

"I'm really excited about having the mural and that image up in La Jolla. It's my contribution to the creativity and the artistry and the welcoming nature of the community."

What makes the placement notable is the wall itself. This is a new site for the program, its first commission sited directly on a Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego building, and the program's leadership described it, according to local coverage of the installation, as embodying the public nature of the project because it is accessible around the clock to anyone simply moving through the village. The timing lines up with the museum's own calendar. MCASD has an upcoming exhibition, "Visiones Nocturnas," that will feature more of Terrill's work, meaning the mural functions as a preview as much as a standalone piece.

The part almost nobody walking past it realizes

Here is the detail that changes how you should think about every mural you have ever passed in La Jolla without a second glance: none of them are city property, and none of them are permanent by design.

Murals of La Jolla is a project of the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, originally initiated by the La Jolla Community Foundation back in 2010. An Art Advisory Committee made up of the heads of the village's major visual arts organizations selects the artists and negotiates with private property owners for wall space. Every mural sits on privately owned buildings. Every dollar comes from private donations. The City of San Diego has no approval role and no funding line in any of it.

That structure has produced a lot of art over sixteen years. The program has commissioned more than fifty works since it began. Right now, only around fifteen are on view. Do the math and the pattern is obvious: the large majority of everything this program has ever put on a wall has already come down. Each piece is guaranteed a minimum of two years, but the practical lifespan has run anywhere from two to six years before a wall gets reassigned to someone new. If you have a favorite, the honest advice is to go look at it soon, because the program's whole premise is turnover.

That also reframes what just happened on the museum wall. In a rotation dominated by geometric abstraction, color studies, and formal experiments, an autobiographical, explicitly queer, AIDS-era image is a departure, and it landed on the one site in the collection with a fixed institutional partner and a specific exhibition tie-in. Whether that makes it more likely to stay past the usual cycle is not something the program has said. What is clear is that this is the boldest thing the collection has produced sitting on the site with the most permanence built into it by association.

What is still standing this year, and where to find it

If you want to see what the rest of the current rotation looks like before more of it rotates out, here is a starting list, based on works confirmed on view earlier this year:

McMakin's piece is worth a second look for a different reason. It is his second version at that exact wall. The original 2010 "Favorite Color" became enough of a neighborhood fixture that when it came time to retire it, the program invited McMakin back rather than handing the site to someone new. That almost never happens. It is the exception that proves how firmly the rest of the collection sticks to its clock.

The Athenaeum runs free guided walking tours on the last Wednesday of the month at 5:30 p.m. during warmer months, capped at 35 people and lasting about 90 minutes, with registration required. There is also a self-guided map available through the Murals of La Jolla site for anyone who would rather move at their own pace on a weekend morning.

Why this matters if you already live here

None of this required a city council vote. No public hearing decided that a 1989 image of grief and partnership would go up on the art museum's wall this August, or that a McMakin abstraction would get a rare second act on Eads Avenue while dozens of other commissioned works quietly came down and were never replaced on the same site. A handful of arts administrators, a rotating list of building owners willing to lend a wall, and whoever is writing the checks that year decide what you see on your walk to coffee.

That is a different kind of civic character than the one most residents assume governs a place like this. The architecture changes slowly, shaped by coastal review and permitting timelines that can stretch for months. The art on the walls changes on a completely separate, much faster clock, driven by private money and a committee most people who live three blocks away have never heard of. "Remembrance" is the newest proof that the system is still willing to take real chances with what goes up. Whether it lasts the full run or gets replaced in two years like most of what came before it is, characteristically, not up to anyone at City Hall.

If you are the kind of person who notices when a wall changes, who wants to know the story behind the piece you walk past every morning, you already understand what makes this village worth paying attention to in the first place. For more of that kind of local read on La Jolla, San Diego Dream House keeps a close eye on the details that make this coastline what it is, whether that is a mural on a museum wall or a home you have been quietly watching for the right moment. When that moment comes, we would love to help you make sense of it.