Teotihuacan Art in America

In 1993, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) received a major exhibition that showed for the first time to American eyes the splendor of the Teotihuacan culture . That exhibition, Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods exhibited a rich collection of unique pieces: sumptuary jewelry, obsidian pieces and fragments of murals, which spoke of the art, cosmogony, and relevance of this ancient metropolis, known worldwide for its famous Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon.

24 years later, the same museum will receive again, in late September , another major exhibition dedicated to the City of the Gods. This time, they will gather archeological objects and materials recovered from the excavations in the last two decades.

Featuring over 200 artifacts , the exhibition Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire will show the glory of this city, which at its peak (450 and 650 A.C) was the most important cultural, political, economic and religious urban center of Mesoamerica.

According to the exhibition curator, Mattew H. Robb, the exhibition will allow audiences to visualize how those different communities gathered in one large, complex and cosmopolitan city, which will offer a valuable lesson for contemporary audiences. “This exhibition will give visitors the chance to be immersed in the history of Teotihuacan and its urbanism through encounters with 200 objects,” he said.

The exhibition, organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the Mexican Secretary of Culture is considered the “first major exhibition on Teotihuacan in the U.S. in over 20 years ,” and is “a rare opportunity to view objects drawn from major collections in Mexico, some recently excavated – many on view in the U.S. for the first time,” according to the information presented by the museum on their website.

The exhibition will include artifacts from the recent excavations at the site of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and the Sun Pyramid. It will also bring together fragments of murals from other pieces of the FAMSF's own collection.

Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire

will be on view at The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco from September 30, 2017, through February 11, 2018. Then it will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from March 25 though July 15, 2018.

Early this year, the INAH's director, Diego Prieto, said this exhibition will also be shown at the Cultural Center Tijuana, and that they were working on getting it to New Mexico and Texas.

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