Program

Public Programs: America's Historical and Cultural Organizations: Implementation Grants

Period of Performance

8/1/2016 - 6/30/2018

Funding Totals

$400,000.00 (approved)
$400,000.00 (awarded)


City of Water, City of Fire: Art and Cosmos at Teotihuacan

FAIN: GI-250260-16

Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums (San Francisco, CA 94118-4502)
Matthew H. Robb (Project Director: January 2016 to June 2019)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, and public programs about the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is seeking $400,000 to organize and present City of Water, City of Fire: Art and Cosmos at Teotihuacan; and $60,000 for a staff position in public humanities. This exhibition examines new discoveries at Teotihuacan, an ancient Mexican city of as many as 125,000 residents active from ca. 100 BCE to ca. 550 CE. Recent excavations give the opportunity to integrate new data to understand what was a primary urban center of the Western Hemisphere. The main interpretive goal is to deepen understanding of Teotihuacan through the study, display, and interpretation of objects from well-defined archaeological contexts. The main humanities theme will be urbanism, cosmology, place and context, and society and social memory. City of Water, City of Fire will be at the de Young 9/16/17-2/11/18, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March-July 2018. There will be a catalogue; extensive programs, a microsite; an interactive gallery display, and audio tour.





Associated Products

Teotihuacan : city of water, city of fire (Book)
Title: Teotihuacan : city of water, city of fire
Editor: Robb, Matthew H.
Abstract: Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan : City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site--the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid--which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city's history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Antropologia and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueologicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan's citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017-February 11, 2018; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March-June 2018"
Year: 2017
Secondary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/981118156
Publisher: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ; University of California Press, San Francisco, CA, Oakland, California
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780520296558

Prizes

Award for Excellence
Date: 5/6/2018
Organization: AAMC
Abstract: The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) & AAMC Foundation announced the 2018 recipients of its Awards for Excellence, the organizations’ annual prize recognizing groundbreaking new scholarship in the field. The awards were presented this year by PACART, the fine art and exhibition transportation service, with Pierre Bechard, President of PACART recognizing the awardees at a ceremony held during the AAMC Annual Conference at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.

Teotihuacan : city of water, city of fire : a pictorial (Book)
Title: Teotihuacan : city of water, city of fire : a pictorial
Editor: Danica Michels Hodge
Abstract: Published by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco on the occasion of the exhibition 'Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire', de Young, September 30, 2017-February 11, 2018; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 25-July 15, 2018. This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Secretaría de Cultura through the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México"--Page 40 "Portion of this book were adapted from the exhibition catalogue 'Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire', edited by Mathew H. Robb (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Oakland: University of California Press, 2017)
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/1102268513
Publisher: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780884011514