Old and New: Art from Precolumbian Times to the Present & Teotihuacan Drs. Annabeth Headrick and Meg Jackson, Art History ARTH 3910 Sunday, March 24, 2019 – Saturday, March 30, 2019

Introduction. Mexico Old and New: Art from Precolumbian Times to the Present is an opportunity to spend a week exploring archeology, history, and art history in Central America. With the instruction of professors of Precolumbian and of contemporary art, our studies span from one of the most powerful regions in ancient Mesoamerica to a megalopolis that boasts a leading scene in today’s global art world.

Our trip begins in Teotihuacan, where participants will visit one of the largest preindustrial cities during its time (150 BCE-600 CE). We will begin our exploration of the city along its grand avenue, visiting the Temple of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, where we will discuss the symbolism of the sacrificial burials and manmade cave found under the sculpted façade of the temple. Students will also climb the massive pyramids of the Sun and Moon to experience the visual evidence that Teotihuacanos constructed their city to embody creation mythology. A visit to the on-site museum affords exploration of the ceramic and sculptural art of Teotihuacan. Finally, we will investigate several of the city’s apartment compounds where the Teotihuacanos lived, using the lavish in these domestic spaces as evidence for the city’s socio- political structure and civic ritual behavior.

On Tuesday morning (03/26) we travel from Teotihuacan to Mexico City, where our accommodations are in the capital city’s famous central plaza, the Zócalo. Our first afternoon in the city consists of a several-hour walking tour in and around the Zócalo to introduce the long material, architectural, and political history of the area, including its Aztec roots, culturally-iconic buildings, and rich tradition of painting. The murals by Rivera and Siqueiros especially link the old and new, as these Modernists embodied the ’s ideology of the country as a hybrid creation— indigenous and Spanish. There is also an opportunity to visit the and the .

The final three days of the trip (03/27 - 03/29) are an alternating program of Mesoamerican sites and museums together with contemporary art spaces, such as the Museum, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum, and the El Eco Experimental Museum. When available, local curators and gallery professionals will serve as our guides to their collections. Evenings provide opportunities to visit the Basilica de Guadalupe, the market and street life of the Coyoacan neighborhood, and the Ballet Fokolorico.

Objectives and Expectations. Visits to museums, galleries, historic and archeological spaces offer an immersive experience crucial to engaging with art historical subjects in all their complexities. We will become conversant in curatorial, political, spatial, material and aesthetic concerns in pre- and post-colonized Mexico. This course will model different ways to build an integrative perspective into a discourse in which past and present, local and global, play off each other. We will begin to develop a critical vocabulary through which to identify, analyze, and discuss art historical research in situ.

Readings. Selections will be made available online in our course Canvas and are to be read in advance of our trip. Including: Selections from Matthew Robb (editor), Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire. (San Francisco and Oakland: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and University of California Press, 2017). David Carrasco, Myth, Cosmic Terror, and the Templo Mayor, in The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). López Luján, Leonardo, Under the Sign of the Sun: Eagle Feathers, Skins, and Insignia in the Mexico World, In Images Take Flight: Feather Art in Mexico and Europe, 1400-1700, edited by Alessandra Russo, Gerhard Wolf, and Diana Fane, pp. 132-143. (Munich: Kunsthistorisches Instiut in Florenz, Max-Plamck-Institut; Hirmer Verlag GmbH, 2015). Tatiana Flores, Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30! (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). Christopher M. Fraga, Campaigns of Cultural Production: Contemporary Art and Politics in Mexico City (NYU Dissertation, 2012).

Writings. Over the course of the week, you will develop a story collection using the online platform Adobe Spark, or a comparable platform that accommodates long-form, digital/visual/textual storytelling. This is a multimedia assignment that will include photographs and videos taken or collected during the week, together with written reflections of our activities, discussions, and encounters. The end product is a comprehensive meditation on the past and present in Mexico, as we experience it. In your essays, you are expected to identify themes that cross cultures and times, revealing strategies and ideologies that are either distinctly Mexican and/or indicative of contemporary cosmopolitanism. The story collection will be uploaded by midnight on Sunday, March 31.

https://spark.adobe.com/

The expectation is that you brainstorm ideas for your story collection with the professors over the course of the week for added direction and a polished project.

For Graduate Students. You will follow the same reading agenda and event schedule. You will also be tasked to craft final essays, due to the professors via email approximately one week following the trip’s conclusion (Sunday, April 07). At exactly 8-10 pages in length, double- spaced with 11pt font, submitted as a Word .doc(x), the essays are to address larger institutional questions, methodological choices and challenges, and relevant scholarship and materials.

Tentative Schedule. Sunday, March 24: Flight to Mexico City; Transport to Teotihuacan; Program Dinner and Roundtable Discussion Monday, March 25: Teotihuacan Tuesday, March 26: Transport to Mexico City; Afternoon walking tour of historic Zócalo, including Museo Nacional de Arte and Palacio de Bellas Artes Wednesday, March 27: Museo Nacional de Antropología; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo; & PROYECTOSMONCLOVA Thursday, March 28: Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC); Museo Experimental El Eco Friday, March 29: Museo del Templo Mayor; Museo Soumaya; Museo Jumex; Program Dinner Saturday, March 30: Return flights from Mexico City