AFTERWORD: Personal Reflections on the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative

This afterword is best read as a codicil to both the volume’s introduction and to my own essay, “Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migration, and Italian Imaginaries,” allowing me to share some personal reflections on the past decade of involvement with the Watts Towers and its Arts Center. This decade of activity has included both archival and oral research, public programming and academic conference organization (both the conference held at the University of Genova and especially the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative in Los Angeles 2010–11), as well as the editing of this volume. In reviewing this recent