Teachable Moment: Getting to Know the Rialto Mural

“This street between 9th and 11th is really a dead street,” says pastor Tad Monroe, gazing out the window of his Urban Grace Church at the façade of the historic Rialto Theater. “It was in rough shape.” Specifically, says Monroe, the theatre’s western wall was literally a blank slate. 

So Monroe and the Broadway Center got a neighborhood council Innovative Grant and hired graffiti artist group Fab-5, who spiffed the Rialto up with a mural finished last month. 

Photography by Todd Matthews

“It brings a little bit of energy to the street,” says Monroe. “I love it.” A year ago, others didn’t love the prospective murals sketched out by Fab-5, because they combined two controversial influences: graffiti and Islamic art. One reader of the Tacoma News Tribune’s September 2009 story on the controversy wrote on the paper’s Web site, “It’s [a] mural that kowtows to Islam.” 

“That was a little overplayed – sort of an ignorant perspective,” says Monroe. “It wasn’t Islamic so much as Moorish. You know, [Tacoma’s] First Presbyterian is a Spanish/Moorish concept.” Islamic and Western church designs have been “kowtowing” to each other for centuries, and not just in Moor-invaded Spain. As architect Laurie Kerr notes, the pointed church arches we think of as archetypically Western are actually an imported Muslim design. And few critics of the mosque to be built near the World Trade Center realize that the architect of the since-destroyed landmark, Seattle’s Minoru Yamasaki, patterned it on Mecca. 

The mural’s critics expressed other concerns besides anti-Islam sentiment. “Love the Islamic design,” wrote one reader, “but I hate that graffiti part – it looks as though the mural was already defaced.” One reader asked, “What about a mural that celebrates the history of Tacoma?” Another demanded a mural capturing the Rialto’s history, with “old film reels, cameras and perhaps a memorial to vaudeville.”

Broadway Center director David Fischer says the finished product captures the Rialto’s history and function. “It’s a marvel visually expressing what goes on inside the theatre: joy, vibrancy, complexity and beauty.” •