TEOTIHUACAN
doned. It provided a template for all Mesoamerican
cities that followed and prompted
the Aztecs to name it and its major pyramids—
111177
the names we still use today.
The exhibition received a major grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and
many of the archaeologists based in the United
States also received National Science Foundation
awards to support their research. These
types of federal grants sponsor and encourage
international collaborations, providing crucial
support for projects that seek to explore and understand
our common human heritage. As more
and more of the world’s population moves to
cities, it is vitally important for us to understand
how ancient cities approached and solved the
challenges of urban living. Teotihuacan: City of
Water, City of Fire seeks to encourage visitors to
understand this manifestation of the urban experiment,
unique and indigenous to the Western
Hemisphere, where art served to bind communities
together in a shared vision.
Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire
September 30, 2017–February 11, 2018
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/de Young
www.famsf.org
March 25–July 15, 2018
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
www.lacma.org
FIG. 17 (below):
Serpent.
Teotihuacan, Anahuac, Mexico.
AD 200–250.
Obsidian. L: 38.4 cm.
Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de
Teotihuacán/INAH Acervo,
inv. 10-615741.
Photo: Jorge Pérez de Lara Elías, © INAH.
Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums
of San Francisco.
FIG. 18 (below):
Tripod vessel with blowgunner.
Teotihuacan, Anahuac, Mexico.
AD 450–550.
Ceramic with post-fi re stucco and
pigment. H: 13.7.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift
of Constance McCormick Fearing,
inv. AC1998.209.15.
Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.
Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums
of San Francisco.
latial compound known as Xalla (fi g. 9). It has
been painstakingly reassembled from approximately
160 fragments. Archaeologist Leonardo
Lopéz Luján and his colleagues believe
that it was one of many sculptures that were
deliberately broken in an iconoclastic fire that
swept through the city center around AD 550.
This date marks the end of the city’s dominance,
and is much earlier than previously
thought. But the city was never fully aban-