Say tropical decor and you immediately picture the 1980s at its worst. Tiki bars: umbrellas in syrupy cocktails, scratchy woven seats, and, inexplicably, musty wall-to-wall carpeting. Back then ...

His 80-foot-long mural America Tropical spoke to the exploitation of the Mexican worker. Commissioned by the city fathers for a Bavarian beer garden (owned by a Nazi), the mural was intended to ...