City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan

(Los Angeles—January 10, 2018) 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. 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.

“Shaped over centuries by many different peoples and cultures, Teotihuacan was one of the most significant civic centers in the Western Hemisphere,” says Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “Telling its complex and cosmopolitan history is especially relevant to a place like 21st century Los Angeles, where nearly 200 languages are spoken."

“City and Cosmos presents objects found over the last few decades—including some even in the last few years—by archaeologists from Mexico, the U.S., and Japan,” says Megan E. O’Neil, associate curator of art of the ancient Americas and curator of LACMA’s presentation. “These archaeological projects have uncovered remarkable objects in contexts that help us understand the city’s chronology as well as more complex societal questions such as religion, civic identity, and relations with other areas of Mesoamerica.”