TIME

A radical mural captures the soul of San Francisco

FRENCH ARTIST JR IS FAMOUS FOR TELLING the stories of places through the people who inhabit them. At a housing project outside Paris, he pasted supersized portraits of residents on the buildings; their faces would become a backdrop for riots sparked in 2005. A few years later, in the West Bank, he covered walls with black-and-white photos of Israelis and Palestinians, pictured side by side. His latest work, set to debut at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on May 23, attempts a similar feat with expanded ambition. “Why not,” JR says of the project,

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