Standing Figurine, Feathered Serpent Pyramid (Offering 2), Mexico, Teotihuacan, 200–250, Museo Nacional de Antropología/INAH (10-485), Archivo Digital de las Colecciones del Museo Nacional de Antropología/INAH-CANON
City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan – LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents ‘City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan’, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring new archaeological discoveries from the ancient city’s three main pyramids and major residential compounds. March 25 – July 16, 2018.]]>
Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
”City and Cosmos” includes nearly 200 works in various media, such as monumental sculpture made of volcanic stones; polychrome mural paintings; and smaller-scale objects made out of precious greenstones, obsidian, and ceramic. Organized in collaboration with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and the de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, City and Cosmos provides an extraordinary opportunity to see these objects, many of which have never been exhibited in the United States.
The ancient city of Teotihuacan flourished in central Mexico in the first millennium CE and was the largest urban center in the Americas in its day. Highly organized and densely populated, it was built in a grid-like plan over roughly 8 ½–9 ½ square miles. City and Cosmos focuses both on the main pyramids and residential compounds to explore the central question of how the city worked to create a cohesive civic identity. Featuring both monumental sculptures and buried offerings, the exhibition also emphasizes how artworks relate to place, both above and below ground. New discoveries reveal that both visible and buried works were arranged in specific ways to commemorate the city’s ancestral foundations and to forge relationships with vital, essential forces such as fire and water.
”City and Cosmos” is organized according to the city’s main architectural complexes and highlights visible monumental sculpture and buried offerings from the three main pyramids: Sun Pyramid, Moon Pyramid, and Feathered Serpent Pyramid; residential compounds; and the city’s edges and beyond.
Related content
‘A Universal History of Infamy’ – LACMA (exhibition, 2018)
Follow us on:
